Stealth Nerf to Spawn Monkeys

Sunspear can definitely be compared to LDOA while not a clone it has many similarities. One of which is that many people obtain both titles by mob farming. People have many ways to achieve sunspear yet choose to mob farm because they want to get the title fast or for other reasons, thats their play-style. Who are you to say how other people should play or their play style should be nerfed. Farming mobs is not an exploit it's a reasonable method and play-style.

You say LDOA can be obtained too fast? What is the definition for too fast? Well certainly not 2 days. Why? Simple, a significant majority of all pve hall of monument statues for honor can be achieved in less than 2 days. Currently there are over 40 pve Hall of Monument honor statues. Which of those that doesn't have a prequisite of completing titles to obtain takes longer than 2 days? I can think of 1, Master of the North. LDOA is not a superior title than any other pve title so quit trying to make it one. The only pve titles that can be argued as a special case would be master of the north (pretty much requires doing everything offered in the entire eotn campaign) gwamm (requires several titles to obtain) and to a lesser extent the other prequisite titles (requires 3 or more titles to obtain).

And why is that?

So who are you to say how other people should play? I don't mob farm to get my sunspear, I get it through playing the game itself I still get my title.

Farming mobs may not be an exploit but death leveling monsters and repeated spawn farming through abandoning quests are. The point is you are all trying to achieve a title as fast as possible by exploiting game mechanics when other legit avenues are available for you. And worse of all, when these legit ways become available people complained to bring the OLD grindy exploits back into the game. This is why I have always despised and laughed at the old LDoA title. You dont take skills to complete it, most of them don't even know how to call targets to sync up with team mates. All they know is to run a mindless bot.

Nice sounding heroic title, but ironically most of them who got it the old way used cheats and exploits. Titles by themselves don't show whether you are a good player or not, it is the means of getting said title that shows what kind of player you are.

i would like to see you vanquish Tyria in 2 days...

1 I never told anyone how to play. I just noted observations in local chat. Nor did my intent of my message imply that 100% of people obtain a title through mob farming.

2 You say farming mobs is an exploit conditionally if it is quest spawned and abandoned (maybe you also mean quest spawned and not completed too since many people never abandon the quest-they simply rezone or map out).
However this is not an exploit either way. As it has existed openly for a very long time as method to progressing or completing titles without be nerfed or called an exploit by anet and openly encouraged on the official wiki in guides. Examples as follows.....
a) http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Legen...der_Of_Ascalon This links explains how to get LDOA on the official wiki and states "Perhaps even better, repeatedly abandon and re-accept the quest Charr at the Gate (point 1 on map below). That quest spawns 4 Charr and you have Prince Rurik and his guards doing the killing for you. " this was in reference to going from level 7 to level 10 as a step towards the LDOA title long before the new quests were added.
b)http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Light...nk#Acquisition This link explains how to quest spawn bosses and margonites to speedily obtain the lightbringer title. You spawn these mobs through 2 quests repeatedly by never turning in the quest or if you accidentally complete, abadon and retake the quest.

Yes we are trying to achieve a title as fast as possible but through a historically legitimate method but newly available in this case to complete the LDOA title. As far as not taking much skill, its a point based title with no hard mode requirement of which most of these require no or little skill. Even doing 1 quest a day and not mob farming takes no skill. As far as botting, well many titles are bottable but thats up to anet to police and the person playing to respect the terms of service.

3. How do you know most people cheated the title. Also, the method to get a title shouldn't be 1 way is the right way. There should be different ways for different peoples preferred play methods. How you get a title has little to no bearing in proving skill. The best skilled player could pay a runner to complete a dungeon. While a terrible player could redo a dungeon over and over and over and memorize all spawns and copy wiki builds and eventually beat it.

2 Days = 48 hours playtime on the account. 54 zones to vanquish. Utilizing a partner, cons and caravaning. It can be done. For all zones except one parties of 8 can play so do this. Depending on the zone either split up into 2 teams of 4 or stay as 1 Team whichever amounts to the fastest clear. All or almost all zones can be vanquished in less than an hour this way. Results: Tyria Vanquished in less than 2 days.

A better question would be obtain Treasure hunter in less than 2 days. Which I didn't list because it will (based on title change trends) or at least should be changed to require a lower level rank for a statue.

You quoted my post but it doesn't seem as if you've actually read or understood it. I'm advocating NOT doing any grinding and NOT repeatedly killing anything at all. I'm questioning why I would want to do that if I can get by by spending 5 minutes once in a while, when I feel like doing a Vanguard quest, to expend the minimum effort required to cash in 1,000 experience.

The title you eventually gain will display just the same, without any kind of shameful notification attached that you didn't finish it before some arbitrary deadline. Once you manage to hit level 10, any further 'grind' is purely unnecessary and wholly self-inflicted. Complaining about it is moronic and very reminiscent of an addict blaming his lot on the substance he abuses.

Sheesh I have no sympathy with people complaining about the new LDoA quests. Ok, so if you want to zone in and out again and again you can kill the same couple of high level bandits over and over. Big deal. You are getting experience for killing things - that's how the game is played. Duh

It is an exploit no matter how you look at it. Does it even make sense in the lore that to be a "Legendary Defender of Ascalon", you have to let the charrs kill you and repeatedly resurrect until you level them up so you can kill them to gain XP? Does this even make sense as a game play mechanic for an average pre-searing player that just bought this game?

Having said that, unfortunately it is also an exploit that ANet used to encourage through a broken mechanism in the game that allows monsters to level up by killing you repeatedly. We know that ANet doesn't always do the right thing for the game. They thought that by getting people interested in LDoA, they can extend the "life" of GW1 until GW2 is ready even if they are encouraging people to exploit a broken mechanism of the game.

Again another exploit that doesn't make sense to the game mechanic or the lore. But fortunately in this case, you dont need to use this exploit to progress in your lightbringer title as there are many other legit ways to do that.

On the other hand, before this update, death leveling was the only way to obtain LDoA. You didn't have a choice if you wanted this title.

It is still exploiting a broken game mechanic, granted it was one which would probably not get you banned since that was the only way for anyone to get LDoA back then.

Now that we have a proper way of getting LDoA through quests, why do we have to revert to depend on using such exploits again? It is time for ANet to get rid them and work on the actual game play experience itself.

LDoA is one of the most bottable titles because it is one of the most simple (i.e. don't need skill or intelligence) to achieve. The thing that stops most people from achieving this title is just the degree of boredom, which bots are totally immune from.

As I know many people who have botted to get this title, then it stands to reason that there are many more people whom I do not know of, who also botted to get this title.

Different ways of getting the title, should not include botting or exploiting broken game mechanics. It should be different ways of playing this game legitly, not legitimizing the use of bots and hacks.

Again, the game has many exploits and these should be addressed each on their own. Even a terrible player can get better by trying to beat this game repeatedly using legit methods than relying on exploits. Hiring a runner and going afk would not make you a better player.

I think the new quests are a step in the right direction. All we need now is for ANet to:

1. Close the death leveling exploit for LDoA
2. Close the vanguard quest exploit for people who repeatedly farm the spawns.

Reason: People are complaining that the new quests encourages easy (i.e. 2-days) LDoA.

Next, ANet can do more to improve on this further by:

1. Make the quests harder so people are encouraged to party up
2. Make the rewards better so people are still interested in getting LDoA after all the above changes.

Saying something is an exploit repeatedly does not make it an exploit. Also if some people you know use a bot does not prove that MOST people bot. Show me some proof that quest spawned mob farming is an exploit, than we can talk. I've already shown the official wiki encourages it and has been around for ages.

I don't need a web link to tell you that death leveling is an exploit. Just use your brain and think. Do you think the fact that monsters level by owning you repeatedly at a resurrection shrine is an important aspect of this game play design or storyline?

King Adelbern said, "Go forth and recruit the strongest, the smartest. Bring to me the bravest in all Ascalon. Find me the heroes who will lead our kingdom to glory." Did he say, find me the heroes that would get repeatedly owned by charrs at a resurrection shrine so he can level them up? Are you playing like a hero as the story meant you to be, when you do that by leveling charrs through your repeated death?

You keep hashing on death leveling which I don't even care about nor have I talked about. My posts are focused on quest spawned mob farming NOT death leveling.

And that is one problem of being instanced in an area. I see this stealth update as ANet's bandaid for a low level to hire a high level to gain XP, not an actual fix to this problem.

Remember the early days of Pre-searing? When it was believed that the maximum attainable level was 16?

No one complained about death leveling when the first person managed to reach level 20 in Pre-searing (long before this legendary defender title came about). Anet realized that people were leveling up the mobs by letting themselves get killed repeatedly, so they fixed it. For a time, monsters/charmable animals didn't gain exp after killing a player.

Many people complained about this. So much so, that Anet undid their fix. After a while, they even added this 'achievement' as a title. I still can't figure out why.

You don't have to depend on "exploits" to get LDoA. You can do the daily quests once per day, and at 1000xp per day get your title.

Those who want to "fast track" their title can farm a bit. It's no different than the choices one has for Legendary Survivor -- play through each of the campaigns, or farm wurms or Kathandrax Hammers or Kilroy.

They already have worked on a broad, fullfilling, varied game experience -- it's called Post-Searing.

Fact is, attaining level 20 in Pre is unnatural (it totally throws off the balance of half of the rest of Prophecies). Certainly staying in Pre is unnatural. But quite a few people did, and the developers shoehorned in some rewards for that unnatural playstyle. If you don't like it, you don't have to work for it. But I don't see the point in trying to impose Post-Searing values on this little tutorial area in an attempt to "normalize" one wonky title.

lol it seems you have never vanquished a damn thing in your life;
that would be around 54 mins per area...
true there are 3-4 areas that can be done in like 20 mins and many can be done in that time capital,
but eastern frontier,snake dance,talus chute,deldrimor bowl(REALLY easy to miss a patrol and spend ages searching for it...) in kessex verata isnt easy to kill at all;the falls...all of those areas would take a lot more time to VQ
if you use cons for each area maybe but hardly,and who uses cons in VQ lol
you don't need them unless you are very bad
so i stand by my previous post

Look at the part I have bolded that you wrote then look at what strategy I stated to use and see why you have failed to invalidate my point.

Also, you mention for example Eastern Frontier taking over 54 minutes. If you can't beat that in a caravan of an 8-man party utilizing cons (which is what I specifically said to do to obtain the title fast) than you may want to uninstall.

Kessex Verata hard? Lol but whatever, not everyone is equal in skill.

Also please don't respond to this unless you want to pm since this is getting off topic. Thanks.

Exploit in the original meaning pre mmo. We all exploit the weak AI. We exploit lines of sight, exploit the loot code, exploit game mechanics.. and while none may be labeled as an official game exploit, exploitation it is. In the above case you are doing nothing more than exploiting quest spawn NPC solely for exp gain with no intention of actually completing the quest as intended.

Against the rules.. no. Exploit.. plainly, in the literal sense
1.
to utilize, especially for profit; turn to practical account: to exploit an opportunity.
2.
to use selfishly for one's own ends: employers who exploit their workers.
3.
to advance or further through exploitation; promote: He exploited his new movie through a series of guest appearances.

And I have to feel sorry for anyone who feels the need to supposedly Vanquish a continent in two days. One of the neat things about VQ is exploring as you do it, and seeing all the wonderful little bits of art scattered all over. I hope I never get so jaded that playing the game is just a chore that needs done in the least possible time.

When I responded to Daesu stating it was not an exploit I was referring to Daesu's contextual use of exploit...

"Now that we have a proper way of getting LDoA through quests, why do we have to revert to depend on using such exploits again?" implying improper

"you dont need to use this exploit to progress in your lightbringer title as there are many other legit ways to do that." implying illegitimate

This idea of death-leveling being an exploit (in the context that Daesu uses it) is lulzy at best. There are no natural laws of morality with regard to gameplay (gameplay. not social interactions) in GuildWars (or any other game for that matter). What is deemed bad is what Anet says is bad. What is deemed good is what Anet says is good. Seeing as there is a link in which Anet encourages death-leveling, it can only be assumed that death-leveling is not an exploit. How a single individual may feel about it has no bearing on the method's validity, integrity, etc. If Anet said running dungeons was an exploit, then it would be for all intents and purposes, an exploit.

It has been said they should not allow people to farm the daily quest to gain exp for a title.
If this is true then shouldn't they not allow ppl to farm any quest in the game for any title?

If I am wrong please point out why someone should be able to farm the quest in NF for ss/lb titles or path to revelations for norn title. But not this one for ldoa.

There have been ppl that have played the game without ever farming the same quest over and over for a title. If there is a thread where these ppl have requested that others not be allowed to repeatedly farm a quest for a title then I apologize and will say nothing further.

It is not so much whether they allow or disallow people to farm any quest in the game for title, there is nothing they can do about it because the game is based on area instances.

Even if they fix the quest abandonment, they can't prevent people from simply mapping out of the quest and doing this repeatedly. Even if they try, they have to consider other factors, there are also legit reasons why someone would want to map out of a quest (e.g. wrong gear, mom called, etc.). The most they can do, is to make the spawn mob level mapped to the lower level player in the team to discourage EXP monkey.

Fortunately for ss/lb, people don't care as much because there are MANY other less boring ways to achieve the titles(e.g. books, missions, DoA, vanquishing, etc.). LDoA, however, does not have.

Then name me a quest where it asks you to repeatedly be killed by monsters as to death level them? How does death leveling fit in with the story of the game?

Why encourage LDoA? Because ANet wants to support titles and encourage people to continue playing this 6 years old game, so they have to encourage people to go for LDoA for this business reason EVEN IF they have to rely on an existing game exploit. The only reason why ANet HAD TO allow the death leveling exploit because that was the ONLY way to get LDoA before the update. If they have stopped it, then there would have been no more LDoA possible. Pre-searing wasn't designed from the beginning, to level players all the way to level 20 so they had to rely on an exploit.

Getting to level 20 in less than 15 hours in a glorified tutorial completely destroys the pacing in Prophecies. Unlike the tutorial islands in other campaigns where you not only have access to henchmen your party size begins at 4. Henchmen level is an accurate measure of where they expect you to be by design when leaving these areas and so are the levels of enemies you face. As has also been pointed out the amount you receive for quest rewards there is now double or even quadruple what you would receive in post-searing Ascalon through normal gameplay.

Not directed at anyone in particular but...if the complaint is that this is now too slow doesn't that automatically imply the initial update was too fast and you were only interested in this title because it was so incredibly easy to max?

Anet endorses fast-tracking the pacing...ie eotn access at level 10 with max armor and level 20 heroes. Vanguard Quest rewards are higher intentionally than post-searing Ascalon gameplay so players that choose to do the daily quest only will not have to do the same 9 quests over and over again, every day for 4 months to get the title. The initial update to LDOA was fast but sunspear is faster than it before and after the nerf. Also of course some people go for titles that are faster to complete for exampe to complete their hom score. Whats wrong with that?

It's just so weird to me.

I know that if I go kill things solo, I'll get better xp than if I bring a friend.

I choose to bring a friend because it's fun to play with my friend. I even think, as I'm forming the team "o hey if i went solo i'd get more xp" -- but who cares? I'm playing with my friend online.

I don't feel "penalized" by bringing a friend, like some people in this thread do. That's a pretty crappy way to frame the whole thing. You're not being penalized, and if you're so sensitive to the amount of xp you get, well, you don't have to bring a friend if it'll bum you out so hard. But trying to claim the role of the victim? That's bizarre to me.

Failure to recognize poorly implemented content for what it is because it makes getting off that PvE treadmill just a little bit easier. EotN is an absolutely horrible place to compare the rest of the game to so lets not even go there. What is the big hurry anyways? It's not like GW2 is coming out tomorrow.

Treadmill? Sounds like your taking the game too serious. Also, you might as well bracket most pve titles as too easy.

Eotn-I will go there if I want. Since its the most recent addition to the game, it is a better reference point to Anets position today.

GW2 is coming soon enough. Hurry no, obtaining titles in times similar to the time of other titles, why not? Also, whats with the need to drag out the time it takes titles to get?

Perhaps broken reference points are a problem, comparing the time it takes to get LDOA today to the old broken mechanic of death leveling and the time it took to obtain pre-update. If deathleveling never provided experience and the title LDOA was added March 3, 2011. Would it still be considered too fast? Although, the title would probably never be created in that case.

A good idea to reduce the grinding:

if you abandon the quest you cant get it back. I realize that doesn't completely solve the problem, but it still helps.

I don't need to name a quest that involves death-leveling. That's beside the point. Lore is a poor excuse to tag anything in the game as being appropriate or inappropriate; gameplay is always paramount. I'm in no place to speculate what ANet's reasoning was to include death leveling and neither are you. ANet has not taken an active stance against death leveling and outright encourages it. It is not an exploit.

That won't accomplish anything. The quests that are being farmed don't need to be abandoned to farm them.

The earlier suggestion of doubling or tripling the reward and making the foes give 0 exp is the only way to fix any sort of farming of these quests.

Dude, death leveling IS an EXPLOIT not just because I say it is, even ANet calls it an exploit in their developer's update.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Devel...in_Pre-Searing

In any case, I see no point to continue arguing with you over whether it is an exploit or not. Believe what you will.

Simple logic says it is. Anything against the basic design of the game is technically an exploit -> that is exploiting some unexpected/unforeseen mechanics in the game to get benefits.

It's not something they feel like taking an active stance against, just like many other "exploits" in the game, from running to ferrying, you name it.

Still, that doesn't imply it's not an exploit.

The developer's update shouldn't have referred to death leveling as an exploit, because as per this link, using exploits will result in account suspension or termination. This is clearly not what's going to happen if you're caught death leveling. They even created a title for it as a reward, when the act became apparent to them.

With vague handling of terms that appear in their legal notices, they only create an environment of confusion, and grounds for people to defend their actions by excuses like: "Oh, sure, I knew it was an exploit, I just didn't know it was a bannable exploit."

We've already discussed this argument.

When reading EULAs:

usually refers to bug exploits. There's no bug involved here, as a "bug" for the developers is a logic or syntax error in the code provoking a glitch, not a design flaw or issue as the derogative use of the term might suggest.

As a programmer and developer myself, I'd define death-levelling a design flaw, not a bug.

Also worth mentioning:

So bannable offenses are entirely at their discretion. If they felt death-levelling was not game-breaking and rather chose to design a title around it and let it go, it's their choice and their faculty to do so.

As far as I know, death-levelling was well documented and reported. They reacted to the report with the introduction of a title. Again, it was their faculty to do so and not to ban the early adopters.

I know all that.

And because all of that, I'm questioning the wisdom to call it an 'exploit' in a recent developer update. 'Exploit' is a loaded term.

Like I have said, ANet should not have encouraged abusing this exploit, however it was the ONLY way for players to get LDoA before the update.

And that is what why I have been saying that death leveling exploit should and can be expected to be fixed since there are now legitimate ways of obtaining the LDoA title.

The reason for fixing that is because there have been many complaints from you guys that the LDoA title has becomes too easy to obtain by people exploiting death leveling on the quest spawns.

^All much ado about nothing. The LDoA title track didn't code itself. GW isn't self-aware. It's a video game, not SkyNet.

The people who design the game deliberately took the time to design and implement a title track which could ONLY be accomplished by death leveling.

Therefore, people crying about death leveling have noooooooooooooo leg to stand on, and should find other things to cry about.

Not a loaded term at all.

Exploit is just what death levelling is. It relied on the exploitation of a game mechanic (the one that governs levelups) for unintended benefits to the user.

Like with many other game exploits that don't involve code bugs but rather abused design flaws or unforeseen solutions - think of 55HP builds, ferrying and such - , they chose not to act against exploiters, making it a non-bannable exploit, and rather legitimized it by tailoring a title around it.

When they got the chance, they provided a more legit way to reach the same results, trying to discourage the abuse of such exploit.

That's it, their stance about death-levelling.

When abusing an 'exploit' may get your account terminated, I'd call it a loaded term. Argue semantics any way you like, but when they decide to reward a very specific activity with a tailor-made title for it, they shouldn't be calling it an exploit after that. It was an exploit before they created the LDoA title, but when they did that, they elevated it to an encouraged playing style.

Why would a gaming company label something an exploit when they specifically and unequivocally reward the activity? That's just dumb. Exploits, you fix. You don't heap extra rewards upon the 'exploiters'.

But still based on an exploit. They just encouraged their players to exploit a game mechanic to get a title. Debatable, but you can't cancel the past, what's done cannot be undone.

To me, that just means they have not taken actions against it so far, but no reaction doesn't change things. Exploit it was and exploit it is, even if they condone it.

"Exploit" is not a technicality here, "Exploit" is an English word.

This IS an exploit, just not one they're dishing out bans for. So I don't see why they should be calling it differently when they finally decide to provide alternative solutions.

All good points. I could have sworn they removed the ability to do this (later returning it) but after pouring over the archive couldn't find anything in writing. It was most definitely a well documented and widely known part of the game in any event. Considering how truly harmless and localized this was, not to mention time consuming, throwing around 'exploit' sure does make it sound dirty. Just a final thought...a highly sped up version of this is what many people used to speed level pets before taming in the Menagerie (hosted on PvX too at one point iirc?). If you honestly think this was just limited to pre-searing, think again.