Curse

RSGashapon · Feb 20, 2007, 04:48 AM // 04:48

I stopped racing after the fifth knockdown. If I wanted to be KD'd that much, I'd go run around naked in the Shiverpeaks. Besides that, who's idea was it to have player collisions in the races? That did nothing but encourage people to gang up and block others from winning.

I have been extremely disappointed with the PvP arenas in both Wintersday and the Canthan New Year events. There was just no point in continuing to participate in them after the cutthroats had figured out every little exploit... of which they got rewarded for, no less.

P.S. Not to sound like a total humbug about the events, I have enjoyed all the PvE aspects of the events I've participated in (Halloween and Wintersday 2006, and the Canthan New Year). Even did the special Canthan quests nine times over, on all my chara except for my little Ele... she kept her vigil in Urgoz's place so the others could have fun. I do await the next event eagerly to see what Anet surprises us with!

Ekelon · Feb 20, 2007, 04:58 AM // 04:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by beetlebomb

The problem I have with this reward is the "anything goes" approach to getting it, even stepping all over other players. Consider the malicious nature of the box spamming or blocking that took place. Consider the greed of players creating multiple alts to get more than one spot (Dark Sentry). Anet is essentially justifying greed and selfishness by any means necessary to get the prize and thats just plain wrong.

Well, the "anything goes" approach... welcome to the world of all racing games. This is completely fair as it's part of the game.

As for the multiple accounts. I think that is bad, but I can't really think of any way to stop it, as I mean, after all, everyone says this game is luck, yet how come the same guy gets top 100 more than once, and don't say it's from synching. Even with no one KD'ing you, it's still very hard to get a good score.

Lamont Shadow · Feb 20, 2007, 05:18 AM // 05:18

Perhaps it would be a good idea for Anet to add games like this to gw at least a week BEFORE the actual event so they can see how people play and the kinds of exploits that pop up - then, update and fix the game to make it ready for the festival - only the races or games after the start of the festival would count for the win.

In this case, had they opened it for play a few days early, they could have

1. made the roller beetles unable to block or colide with each other (but left in the rock spitting etc since trying to slow your opponents fairly was an important part of the race) and

2. nerf super beetle a little so it didn't determine the out come all on its own

So - anet - in the future please remember that a limited test is not enough - give the whole community a week or two to play so that you can see what problems can arise and we can really have fun with these events

Hell Raiser · Feb 20, 2007, 05:47 AM // 05:47

It is truly sad that these people felt the need to cheat in order to win. I had great fun with the Rollerbeetle race, and before they even started I KNEW I would not get into the top 100, but I just thought it would be because of great racers and not lame cheaters.

This ladder should have been based of individual track times, so you had the choice to try and set a high score or join a group of people to race. Either Anet knowingly allowed this to happen or overlooked such a thing, either way it is pretty terrible and I hope Anet can find a way to punish the people who did this (Presumably by taking away the beetle.). However, it is just a mini-pet for an online game and it really doesn't matter that it is only for 100 people, it is the way it was obtained by some of those people that make it terrible.

Martin Alvito · Feb 20, 2007, 06:00 AM // 06:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by beetlebomb

Dark Sentry is a real standout in the alt problem. He even had the brazen disrespect for both the playerbase and the game creators themselves by creating alts with nearly identical names and adding ftw and omg at the end. He didn't even try to hide the fact he had clearly found a foolproof strategy to maximize his positions on the leaderboard. No one can tell me thats luck, there is something else going on here.

On alternate accounts: I know it was happening, though I wasn't one of the perpetrators. I had a PILE of requests to run people into the top 100 that I declined, because I didn't think it was appropriate. I suppose there wasn't anything stopping me from running out, buying up a bunch of cheap accounts people weren't using anyway, and getting ten beetles. (Other than the fact that it would be lame.) But if I owned ten accounts, and I got a beetle on every account, I would fail to see how that's morally or ethically wrong. Contest rules were one per account; if someone owns several accounts and places them all on the top 100...

Well, for my money Darth Vader said it best: "Impressive. Most impressive."

Besides that, what's wrong with posting a bunch of huge scores in order to guarantee the highest score and also show everyone that posting a top score is truly about skill, not just luck? Lord knows I spent hours and hours chasing Dark's 479k score long after I had posted a time I was confident would hold up. Dark and I know one another very well from hours and ours of HA runs, and for us a large part of the weekend was the competition within the competition to post the absolute highest score. (Which means that, for me, posting the #3 time meant I lost the truly interesting competition to Dark. Sad, eh? /sigh)

Those of you that feel that Anet should have set up the leaderboard to prevent duplicate top 100 entries have a legitimate complaint. However, please do not blame the players that became good enough at the racing to post multiple top 100 scores for this! If I wanted to finish #1, and was willing to keep hammering out times until I managed to top the leaderboard, what's wrong with that? Anet has acknowledged the issue and may yet rebuild the leaderboard to grant more pets to those of you that were knocked off due to the obsessions of others

For that matter, who knew what would be awarded to different places in the top 100? For all we knew, the top 1,2,3,5, or even 10 players might get something extra above and beyond whatever the rest of the top 100 got. Might be a different minipet (if it was indeed pets as the rumor went), a different-color pet (imagine gold, silver and bronze beetles for the top 3 racers? That would have been HOT!), or what have you. Better to finish first if you could!

As it turns out, there was nothing sinister about posting a large number of good times. Conspiracy theorists abounded claiming that people were entry spiking to get good runs...I laughed at this all weekend.

Entry spiking would have hurt you - it's slow and difficult to organize, and it would have cost you a large number of possible attempts. There just wasn't any reason to do it, and I can pretty much guarantee you that no one in the top 10 did it. (I know for a fact that neither Dark, Dragou or I entry spiked, because I saw them race, and that's six of the top 10 entries. Didn't encounter any of the others down there.)

stuntharley · Feb 20, 2007, 06:06 AM // 06:06

Yes maybe only 6 out of 100 didnt cheat, but the other 94 did. I know a few who did the sync'ing but im not going to name names.

Maybe if everyone who competed got a mini-pet and the top 100 got something else like a different skinned one it would be alright. But i wasted my time for this stupid event and got nothing.

I saw 2 people sync in and I was with them one sat on the first box echo kd'ing everyone else...

Martin Alvito · Feb 20, 2007, 06:07 AM // 06:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hell Raiser

It is truly sad that these people felt the need to cheat in order to win. I had great fun with the Rollerbeetle race, and before they even started I KNEW I would not get into the top 100, but I just thought it would be because of great racers and not lame cheaters.

The former statement just makes me mad. Again, I know that the top players weren't cheating in any way. The top times were posted by doing a TON of runs in legitimate competition against five other players, and by getting the lucky powerup combination quickly. No quick echo super? /resign and give it another go.

Please realize that the top times were due to great racers, not lame cheaters. And please give the designers their props for making it incredibly difficult to cheat in this game. For every thing people complain about (entry spiking randoms/snowball arenas being most prominent) there are tons of forms of PvP where there's no way to gain an unfair or illegitimate advantage. I'd argue that skill balancing could use a lot of work, but you have to hand it to Anet for giving us fair and safe trading, a balanced item base without hacked or duplicated items, no packet sniffing, no aimbot/autoplay cheats, and all the other things that we take for granted in this game.

Martin Alvito · Feb 20, 2007, 06:10 AM // 06:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by stuntharley

I saw 2 people sync in and I was with them one sat on the first box echo kd'ing everyone else...

Lame indeed. That said, even I would set up shop on a box to grief people that ticked me off. Cheap knockdown ruin my hot run? Guess what, you weren't finishing before 3:00 by the time I was done with you.

Still, every time I raced with someone in the top 100 (probably 10-12 that I recognized, generally those with multiple entries) it was totally clean.

namkey · Feb 20, 2007, 06:15 AM // 06:15

I am completely confident, that with a ping of about 200, I could have easily got a score of 475k. People's claims of cheating are mostly envy as the vast majority of people I raced against were amazed with a rather slow 469k. My only gripe is that once everyone figured out how to get a good start, I had now hope as I was behind the average American by 0.3 of a second from the start and forever colliding into them and losing time. I still hold a small amount of hope there may be so many multiple that I may somehow squeeze into a revised top 100.

The sad part is that with 24 hours to go, I had 10 top 100 times and at the end of it all, I get nothing, not because of a lack of skill, but because of my location in the world.

Martin Alvito · Feb 20, 2007, 06:22 AM // 06:22

Lag was definitely a problem. That said, I posted most of those times running a ping of around 250-300. Dark's ping is MUCH better than mine, which helps to explain why he was able to manage such a large number of 476+ times. However, I agree that once you got over about 300 ping it became pretty much unplayable. Even at 200-250 it was rough; at 250-300 it took a couple of hours to get a run set up that would enable a 475+ due to all the early knockdown and banding hassles.

Lyonette · Feb 20, 2007, 06:22 AM // 06:22

does anyone know if the rollerbeetle minipet makes noise while in explorable?

Blackest Rose · Feb 20, 2007, 06:23 AM // 06:23

Quote:

Originally Posted by xiaotsu

If everyone had known the beetle would be the reward for top 100, everyone would have concentrated on racing. Not just you. Don't act like you were the only one "duped by Anet". You made the decision not to focus on racing, not Anet. </rant>

Congrats to those of you that one the beetle fairly

The discrepancy between event rewards are massive.

Anyone afk in a lucky district got a pig - people had to really work to win at rollerbeetle.
Oh and I believe I did congratulate the winners in my post but I do feel that Anet did a really bad job in explaining what was happening and the prizes for each.

They labeled the pig a special reward - it was not.
I made the decision not to focus on racing based on information given by Anet...
It turns out that for the chefs materials rewards were given out in the thousands....rollerbeetle to only 100.
It wasn't until Sunday that we found out that pigs weren't actually rare and that was it. By then it's late in the day to refocus on rollerbeetle.

Personally in 20/20 hindsight - I'd have rather concentrated on racing and vied for a beetle rather than waste time on the PVE Chef stuff. I'm guessing many also would.

namkey · Feb 20, 2007, 06:24 AM // 06:24

You would've enjoyed my 500+ pings

. My best of 472k had so much, 2 rolls forward, 1 roll back through it :S

shadowmist · Feb 20, 2007, 06:27 AM // 06:27

Eh, all the complaints about this being too hard seem to be from players that didn't quite get the hang of the game. I played this game a while, and placed first or second everytime. Its quite easy, which makes getting a high score difficult. The trick is to just get ahead of the pack at the beginning, then you only have 1-2 competitors. If you do well, you'll pretty much outstrip everyone else and get first place easy, pretty much means no knockdowns.

This game is good, and I don't feel its fair for people to complain just because they did not do well. I understand that losing isn't nice, and you all wanted a little beetle. But really, c'mon. It was a good mini-game, and it worked. Don't take away from the winners by complaining.

I didn't see anyone camping at a box, but I can see how that would be annoying. Those players that just play to make life hard for others (they can't plan it with someone else, as teaming is random) should really just find something better to do with their lives. Growing up would be nice.

Edit: On a side note, I don't think the rubber banding had to do with internet. I run on dial up, with a good comp, and had no rubber banding except at the start gate. I'd suggest defragmenting your computers or something. I could just have more luck than others or something, but my friend runs on cable with a laptop and says he has more rubber banding than on my comp so...

Martin Alvito · Feb 20, 2007, 06:29 AM // 06:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by namkey

The sad part is that with 24 hours to go, I had 10 top 100 times and at the end of it all, I get nothing, not because of a lack of skill, but because of my location in the world.

I definitely feel you on that; with 24 hours to go I posted the #5 time on the board...by the time everything was said and done that time was down to #53 or so. I was stunned by how quickly players were able to shave three seconds off of the top runs overall. On the one hand, very small changes easily were good for three seconds; on the other hand, those changes were *very* counterintuitive, and I figured it would take people longer to figure out how to solve the problem of the long bridge and beach sequences between the 5th and 6th checkpoints. After all, it took me two days to figure that one out (and share it with Dark), and I probably put in a good twenty hours over those first two days.

Or maybe most didn't solve it and just were able (given sufficient attempts) to get lucky early combos along with 3rd supers to post all those 474s.

Martin Alvito · Feb 20, 2007, 06:29 AM // 06:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lyonette

does anyone know if the rollerbeetle minipet makes noise while in explorable?

It does not. I was hoping it would use the Dash animation and sound when it got far enough away, but no such luck.

Hell Raiser · Feb 20, 2007, 06:30 AM // 06:30

I'm sorry but I do not envy someone because they get a Mini-pet Rollerbeetle. I'm not going to say you don't have a life (even though spending hours trying to find out when/where/how to activate the powerups sounds a bit like... no life

), but it is a FACT that people were spike joining. Don't even try to argue there, I got hit with something of the sort but I thought nothing of it, we passed the first checkoint and I (among others) went to the right up the hill, we get to the box and I grab it, but wth some guy is camping it, and he is spamming KD's ( I thought it was just someone trying to get Echo+super beetle), luckily while he was KD'ing me I was right at the box, too, and got a super beetle.

You may not have cheated, but several people did.

Martin Alvito · Feb 20, 2007, 06:31 AM // 06:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by namkey

You would've enjoyed my 500+ pings

. My best of 472k had so much, 2 rolls forward, 1 roll back through it :S

Banding was seriously for the loss; I had another 477-478 run ruined by a massive band on the BEACH of all places (full 5 second band). I completely feel you on that.

And I agree that 500+ ping was pretty much unplayable. When mine got that high, I went to sleep.

Martin Alvito · Feb 20, 2007, 06:35 AM // 06:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadowmist

I didn't see anyone camping at a box, but I can see how that would be annoying. Those players that just play to make life hard for others (they can't plan it with someone else, as teaming is random) should really just find something better to do with their lives. Growing up would be nice.

Griefing is lame, and such players should be shot. All I was getting at was that I wasn't above massive retaliation if someone cost me a likely top 100 run.

Quote:

Originally Posted by shadowmist

Edit: On a side note, I don't think the rubber banding had to do with internet. I run on dial up, with a good comp, and had no rubber banding except at the start gate. I'd suggest defragmenting your computers or something. I could just have more luck than others or something, but my friend runs on cable with a laptop and says he has more rubber banding than on my comp so...

I run DSL, 4200+, recent defrag (checked that when I started lagging, no fragmentation in the GW directory), and I lagged quite often. Generally during peak Euro, Asia or American hours...pretty sure it was just server load. Was absolutely awful near and during the chef events, of course.

Basically, when it was playable I was in the 200-270 range; when it got 300-350+ it literally took hours on end to get a top 100 run together knowing *every* trick in the book.

atkafighter · Feb 20, 2007, 06:37 AM // 06:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blackest Rose

The discrepancy between event rewards are massive.

Anyone afk in a lucky district got a pig - people had to really work to win at rollerbeetle.
Oh and I believe I did congratulate the winners in my post but I do feel that Anet did a really bad job in explaining what was happening and the prizes for each.

They labeled the pig a special reward - it was not.
I made the decision not to focus on racing based on information given by Anet...
It turns out that for the chefs materials rewards were given out in the thousands....rollerbeetle to only 100.
It wasn't until Sunday that we found out that pigs weren't actually rare and that was it. By then it's late in the day to refocus on rollerbeetle.

Personally in 20/20 hindsight - I'd have rather concentrated on racing and vied for a beetle rather than waste time on the PVE Chef stuff. I'm guessing many also would.

That was pretty much what I was going to say.

Some of us chose to go for Lunar Fortunes for pigs, and some of us played for the top 100 spot (not knowing of any reward other than braggin rights). Had we known we might have changed our priorities. I think to make it fair anyone who completed a roller beetle race should get a mini bettle with no flames (solid color), and top 100s get the snazzy flames beetle. Satisfies both parties IMHO.