Guild Wars 2

Last year: OMG the labyrinth is so fun!

This year: OMG the labyrinth is so lame and boring!

Nothing has changed aside from the addition of a few bosses and mob types. Why the shift?

Because people will always complain about everything, no matter what it is.

The most interesting thing i’m seeing is people complaining about less to do. IIRC, we didn’t even get the labyrinth on day one last time.

I agree mostly with lordkrall.

Also considering people can still champ farm in other maps (which is easier/faster/more profitable) I have a feeling most people are ignoring the labyrinth once they get their couple of achievements. Plus the fact that the bosses only give their chests 1/day (I think it was the same last year too) hurts the “farmability” of it. I think the only people who stick around are those trying to get candy corn/other Halloween mats (or if they enjoy it), seeing its the only place where the candy corn nodes reliably spawn.

Also this may just be my thoughts because I can’t remember last year that well. These bosses seem harder (could be bad memory, could be less people, could be both). The skeleton litch is part dps check with his leech life (was trying with ~10 or so people on a low level alt and we couldn’t lower his life), plus many people dye from the relational mobs. The candy corn boss can do massive damage as well. shrug I do somewhat miss the event in the center (I can’t remember if it was the chainsaw skeleton or a different one), but the added fear of turning the corner to see the chainsaw skeleton on a low level alt makes up for it.

Edit: Don’t get me wrong I like just about all of the event. My only complaint is the high prices for rewards this time around.

I used the labyrinth last year to farm XP, that is much harder to do this year. The bosses slow things down, an it feels like the doors spawn slower.

Others used the labyrinth last year to grind for special skin drops. To my knowledge, there are no special drops to farm for this year.

I believe these are the reasons for the different tune this year.

Everything has changed, 15 000 candies for the bags, 100 000 skulls and 10 000 candies for weapon, no good rewards, loots or titles to look forward to. Those numbers are insane and unattainable for most. Last years event was about fun, this years is about grind and milking us dry. Only farmers will get anything from this event.

labrinyth is just a grind this time, and the bosses have way to much health and hit excessively hard, 15k from the candy corn dude? yea nty.

How is it any different from the grind last time though?
The only real difference is that the bosses added are a bit more time-consuming, but other than that it is more or less the same.

lordkrall.7241:

How is it any different from the grind last time though?
The only real difference is that the bosses added are a bit more time-consuming, but other than that it is more or less the same.

Could be that pav had better rewards for the amount of grind there was and/or how much that burnt us out.

While I am having fun in this halloween event, I also think that the previous one was better, but mainly because of the execution. Even if it has the same things I think it was the “newness” and the way they were delivered that makes us feel like that (as Mad King Thorn surely knows, the joke depends heavily on the delivery… and on how sharp the executioner’s axe is.. ).

Last year it was a gradual build up, first we got the decorations, lion statue starting to get cracked (most people just assumed it was part of the decoration) and the quest for the mad king book (lots of “is that is???” complains on forums as well)… then a few days later the doors start to show up, we got access to the mad king realm, clocktower jumping puzzle and mini games, and a continuation of the book quest, and the lion fountain got even more corrupted with light coming out of it, then a few days later the statue explodes, a giant Mad King Thorn comes out and we get access to the halloween dungeon. It was a slow build up to an awesome conclusion.

While this year is mostly the same thing but with new instanced story bits (haven’t done them but heard high praise for them from guildies), I think the execution suffered for having it all thrown in from the beggining instead of gradually like last year

While the Labyrinth is basically similar to how it was last year, the Carving Pumpkins aren’t tracked by an achievement anymore (except if they’re a daily,) and the bosses do seem a bit harder. I think a bigger issue with it, however, is that champ training is a thing now, where it wasn’t back in October last year. Labyrinth was an early introduction to that kind of farming, which was novel at the time, but now has to compete with what people are doing daily.

I think Sonder the Seller’s new rewards have been a disaster for morale all around. They give new options for spending candy, which sounds like it should be pure upside…but those options are out of reach for most everyone who isn’t filthy rich, which is worse than not being presented the option at all. Maybe the supply will go up before the end of Halloween, but right now it’s looking even worse than Dragon Bash’s Jorbreakers, which were at least mitigated by the fact that their prize could drop randomly.

Then you have the Halloween weapon recipes, which weren’t particularly easy or common before, now requiring 400x the old ingredients to make. (Not counting the cost to actually make the weapon using the recipe.) I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen anyone using any particular Halloween weapon in the past year, and on two hands the number I’ve seen Halloween weapons altogether. I’m not sure what this increase is supposed to be doing, but it’s putting a real damper on enthusiasm for the event.

I do like Magister Tassi’s instance, and I can’t wait to be able to progress the storyline; I have high hopes for that. Clocktower seems like an enormous improvement, and I haven’t played Lunatic Inquisition yet, though I expect it to be similar to last year.

Labyrinth is quite boring. Here’s a screen of how awesome it is……

Last year the drops were worthwhile. This year they’re not. Just look at the absurd candycorn requirements for the bag and the mini.

Harbinger.8637:

Labyrinth is quite boring. Here’s a screen of how awesome it is……

Why have you not picked new stats yet? That’s weird man

Psycho Robot.7835:

Harbinger.8637:

Labyrinth is quite boring. Here’s a screen of how awesome it is……

Why have you not picked new stats yet? That’s weird man

Its been bugged ever since the legendary update. I updated all my stuff, and it still pops up. So I just ignore it now.

PopeUrban.2578:

Last year: OMG the labyrinth is so fun!

This year: OMG the labyrinth is so lame and boring!

Nothing has changed aside from the addition of a few bosses and mob types. Why the shift?

I think the general reason is because most people were hyped in their minds that this would be 100% new content. I must admit there was a part of my mind that thought there was enough about this game that was relatively fresh and new that this Halloween would be a new event, maybe not 100% but at least 80-90%.

People ran the labyrinth adnoseum last year because it was so fun, so it’s quite possibly a reference to burn out. While I can’t answer for them, it’s why I’m a bit meh and disappointed with this and other points of the event.

Yea I think people’s expectations may have been set way high since Halloween was so massive and unique last year. I’m enjoying what I’ve seen so far though. I want to do the second part of that instance! :p

Players also need to realize its only been a day. Halloween had multiple phases last year, we may just be seeing the beginning/getting old content out of the way.

Anet did state that they were using the holidays to give a large block of content so they could focus on other updates. If you want to see this years slow burn, you might want to check out Kessex Hills….

The trash doesn’t seem to be scaling up very well. Even in a full group it’s hard to get most of the trash before it dies.

Last year:
People had MF over 100% just by wearing the gear and food.
Halloween was before the dreaded Southsun patch which people suspected ninja-nerfed droprates and made diminishing returns even more strict.
All of the door events were on faster timers, the center even spawned roughly every 30mins to 1 hour.
Lowered expectations due to the content being 100% new and promises of next year being better due to being able to build on top of the old content.

This year:
Grind 100,000 candy corn/skulls/tacos/whatever.
Door events are slower
DR is evil. Be in the lab for over an hour and all you get is greys.
MF is above 100 if you’ve been sharding everything since September.
Little to no candy corn nodes in the world

More work, less reward. Same kitten, different day.

I still very much enjoy the atmosphere and I still like the Clocktower. The first story instance was great. But the labryinth wasn’t even that fun last year. :P It was nice if you wanted some extra candy corn or treat bags and I enjoy its atmosphere as well (the conversations between the Mad King and his son are great) but really there’s not much too it. Then given the costs of rewards and not much new, yeah, people just won’t be as excited as last year when it was all new.

The problem with it is that the game has grown, but the Halloween event hasn’t grown with it. I’d say it has even been set back, because now the bosses have way too much hp and they don’t drop the craftable halloween skins. During the previous event loot was different. Champions and veterans didn’t really matter so everyone was happy with the many trash mobs in labyrinth and a few bosses. Nowadays you don’t really get the good loot from trash, but from champions. That’s why last year ppl were farming exp and loot in labyrinth and now most ppl just get the hell out of there once they finish their achievs for this year. It’s not profitable in the current state of the game so you really have no reason to be there.

I’m disappointed that some of the things from last year didn’t come around again. I didn’t finish upgrading the book back piece to the fiery version on all of my characters, figured I might be able to do that when the event came back around. Now the stuff I’ve been holding onto since the Christmas event starts to look like trash in my bank as I doubt it’ll be used again.

At least Tassi is involved this year.

I’m afraid Wintersday might be even worse than Halloween as last year Wintersday was already way less than Halloween. So I’m also preparing for a trimmed down version of Wintersday 2012 in december.

1. People like to brag that they have things that other people can’t get
2. Last year the chest was not account bound and thus was more farmable.

I get that people shouldn’t just Roll with lvl2 new characters and farm exotic all day, but the rewards just kill replay value.

The actual changes to the clock tower mechanics were first rate. Kudos!

Five minutes into the labyrinth and I had 13 porous bones and a few other meaningless items. Perma DR.

bravoart.5308:

Last year:
People had MF over 100% just by wearing the gear and food.
Halloween was before the dreaded Southsun patch which people suspected ninja-nerfed droprates and made diminishing returns even more strict.
All of the door events were on faster timers, the center even spawned roughly every 30mins to 1 hour.
Lowered expectations due to the content being 100% new and promises of next year being better due to being able to build on top of the old content.

This year:
Grind 100,000 candy corn/skulls/tacos/whatever.
Door events are slower
DR is evil. Be in the lab for over an hour and all you get is greys.
MF is above 100 if you’ve been sharding everything since September.
Little to no candy corn nodes in the world

More work, less reward. Same kitten, different day.

You forgot to mention that there is also no 150 clicks of pumpkin carving for achievement. You forgot that this year there is no mini game matches required for meta-achivement. Things people used to complain about…

Also, are you saying that last year getting halloween skin wassnt grind? Like when you could just obtain them by mini dungein chest drop? Or after they made them craftable? Yea it was sure easy making them back then, and cheap too. And nobody complained either.

So they made candy corn supply shorter than last year. I wonder why tho…I sold about 2 months ago around 30 stacks of candy corn at 7-8c ( yea i regreted it ), and i was gathering it casualy not like a maniac. Needless to say that it was too much candy out there.

Point is, if you wanna feel like a special snowflake dish out cash and craft your skin, yea fashion is expensive. They made much better and polished halloween this year, with a new twist and its great.

bravoart.5308:

More work, less reward.

This and zergs are boring after 2 minutes for me.

Mad Rasputin.7809:

Five minutes into the labyrinth and I had 13 porous bones and a few other meaningless items. Perma DR.

Five minutes in you… wait what?

PopeUrban.2578:

Mad Rasputin.7809:

Five minutes into the labyrinth and I had 13 porous bones and a few other meaningless items. Perma DR.

Five minutes in you… wait what?

He didnt get precursor in first 2 mins. permaDR…

lordkrall.7241:

Because people will always complain about everything, no matter what it is.

oh looks its one of anet’s yes men that never complains and likes to bad content that ruins last years version that was BETTER

How does it ruin last years version?
Is last years version somehow destroyed? If that is the case I must congratulate ArenaNet for being the first company ever to successfully create a working time-machine.

The content is just showing its age.

The Labyrinth pales in comparison to the Pavilion and Scarlet Invasion events. The zerg size required to defeat the new Legendary bosses renders the entire rest of the content in there moot. It’s a waste of time for 60 odd people to open a door and a single veteran skeleton pour out… and the “Foes Remaining” events dont scale enough at all. I havent seen a single champion spawn in those events, and thats where all the rewards are in the new game. The masses of veterans get destroyed utterly due to the zerg size required in case one of the Legendaries spawn.

XP is also a lot slower to gather in there because the zerg runs from event to event. The mobs in between are ignored, and getting left behind them with a group of 7-8 angry Halloween mobs isnt pleasant for any downleveled character…

Really apart from the achievements and the joy of zerging, there’s not much really to the Labyrinth this year. Still love the Clocktower and the Inquisition though! And the story bits are good so far. I’m waiting to see what if anything happens next as the event continues.

(Not going to talk about the new recipes and requirements. I know I’d be banned for 2 weeks no matter how hard I’d try not to.)

The center spawn point has been disabled, so a good part of the fun has been lost in the labyrinth. Previously people could run around until the middle triggered and then everyone ran to that. Now there is no “top boss” and nothing to aim for.

My solution – once the three bosses are killed, the middle boss appears and has a chance at dropping skins like the greatsaw. Problem solved.

Last year’s event was the first big holiday event. They added a bunch of things that were fairly fun to do, several new special items, town clothes costumes, etc. It felt huge compared to what other previous MMOs had done for Halloween time.

Since then we have had a number of living story updates that have added all of this and more. My increased expectations are revealing the age factor on this original event, especially when several things I was looking forward to seeing again have been removed (or have not yet returned?). Very little new stuff has been revealed, and the new available rewards have insane costs, given the current state of the event (maybe candy corn and other mats will be available later in higher amounts?).

I expected to see more right out of the gate to immerse and entertain me: new and better achievements, new town clothes costumes (and the return of the previous ones), maybe decorations in other cities, and maybe even a new activity beyond the new short story dungeon (10 minutes of fun). It currently feels like more things were removed when I had expected more things would have been added. Being only day two of the event, I still hope to see more revealed as time goes on.

PopeUrban.2578:

Last year: OMG the labyrinth is so fun!

This year: OMG the labyrinth is so lame and boring!

Nothing has changed aside from the addition of a few bosses and mob types. Why the shift?

Look at it this way:

You go to a new restaurant, giving someplace new a try. They serve you a sandwich on a paper plate and a drink in a Styrofoam cup. Looks a bit below par, but the sandwich is great, well worth what you paid for it.

Later, you hear that they’ve improved things there. You return and order the new version of the sandwich. Turns out it’s the same sandwich, served on a better plate, and with a pickle on the side. Okay, a little disappointing, but it’s still a good sandwich, right?

The real disappointment (AKA: the crafting) comes when you take your first bite, and find a band-aid in your sandwich. Sure, the rest of the sandwich is still going to taste good, but you’re disgusted and ready to complain. Loudly. That’s what we’re seeing here.

What people should realize is that last year the game was still fairly new and the game play mechanics were still fresh.
Now it’s been a year and players have experienced a lot of what the game had to offer and are (finally) starting to realize this event is barely any different than every other zone/farming spot other than a change of scenery (and worse rewards).

I can’t compare it to last year because I wasn’t here last year. I mostly play WvW but I took last night to do some of the Halloween stuff. The instanced story intro seemed pretty good. I went to LA and did the jumping thing to get in the cauldron to do the costume brawl and that was fun.

Then I went out into the 3 Krytan zones to look for the doors. I found one, opened it and nothing happened so I clicked on it, thinking that was what I was supposed to do. I got sent to the Mad Realm and my only option was to go back to LA. Once I did that, I waypointed back to Kryta to keep looking for doors. I ran around for like 15 minutes and had about 5 of them disappear on me before I could reach them. I did manage to reach 3 or 4 of them and 2 of those dropped a trick or treat bag and the others, like the first one I encountered, seemed to do nothing. I don’t understand this content at all. Not fun.

Next I tried out the Lunatic Inquisition and played 2 or 3 rounds of that. I thought it was a fun game mode and will probably play it a couple more times before it goes away.

Last I did the Labyrinth. I ran around by myself for a bit just killing things (never saw a door or a boss) and then the zerg found me so I fell in with them. We killed three bosses, but I only got one of the achievements, curiously. I spent most of the time helping rez people during the boss fights. At the end of the night I had like 75 candy corn so I went to the holiday vendor to see what he sold and saw that it takes 1,000 to make one of the candy corn cobs and that the only things he sold require 15 and 20 of those cobs. This is the point where I pretty much wrote off ever going back to the Labyrinth. I get, at most, 3 hours a day to play after my kids are in bed and even if I did this every night for all 3 of those hours, there is no way I’d ever be able to afford anything.

I look forward to trying the clock tower tonight. I recently started seeking out jumping puzzles and have been enjoying them a lot so I think I will enjoy this.

PopeUrban.2578:

Last year: OMG the labyrinth is so fun!

This year: OMG the labyrinth is so lame and boring!

Nothing has changed aside from the addition of a few bosses and mob types. Why the shift?

Last year the Labyrinth had drop rate significantly better than the normal one (even after it got nerfed). This year, not so much. Might have something to do with it.
The fact that farming halloween mats is pretty much useless now (considering how many of them you’d need for gift recipes), it lowers the interest even further. Also, no special skins that were there last year.

Additionally, nowadays we have such events quite often, so the novelty wore off.

It’s likely because the game and forums are more populated, simply. Also people now have a bar to compare this event to. I’m sure if last year was the second Halloween event there would be equal dissatisfaction.

Also, the rewards. The weapon skins last year were quite obtainable if you put the effort in. This year they are locked behind fairy tale grinds and RNG. Along with that, the actual story is locked behind achievements rather than being a fun tag-along drama.

Personally, the content is fine. I’m 11/13 on the meta and enjoy the story thus far. The problem is, however, that rather than being a flowing, festive activity, it feels like you have to make a choice in the content you participate in. Do you spend every hour grinding away for an old weapon? Do you break bank looking to get a new weapon? Do you push through the grind fest achievements to progress the story?

There is a separation between the story and the festivities that didn’t exist last year and that’s the only gripe I have with the new holiday. I wonder if the idea to combine living Story with annual holiday events is a bad idea.

As someone who has done the last Halloween event, I believe that this felt a bit lacking compared to last year. Although, that was our first event, and they did add a lot, we were told by Colin the following:

“We still want to have some content that can happen each year, our holiday festivals, Super Adventure Box, Zephyr Sanctum, and the new Queens Gauntlet are all intended to be content that will regularly return. The goal of having these in our portfolio of event content that can occur again each year is they allow us the opportunity to easily build on something we’ve already completed as themes for some of our releases for year 2.

We wanted to get to the end of the first year of Gw2 with a decent amount of these events that can happen each year in our pocket, to allow our second year a lot more opportunities to lean on these while we focus on much larger projects we’ve been working on in the background. You will not see another new recurring style event in 2014 once our core portfolio of returning events have been completed with the Queens Gauntlet. You’ll already see the benefits of this as the return of Halloween, SAB, and Wintersday has given some of our teams time to focus on other bigger projects during that time."

I think a lot of people interpreted that as there would be a lot more things to do this Halloween, just as the Super Adventure Box did. They released the old achievements while adding new ones. However, I think the focus this Halloween was the QoL changes they implemented as well as whatever the focus is for the end of October (the Kessex problem) + the future (ascended armor / new fractals). Halloween in Guild Wars should be focused on the Thorn family AND the Mad King, but new players are only experiencing the Mad King as a tall giant that stands in the Mad Realm.

Really the only things that I saw were:

• They added several missions regarding the Prince
• They removed the old scavenger hunt that gave background on the Mad King (which I believe could be expanded and should be a start for Halloween)
• Clock Tower improvements are a plus, but no incentive to go in there if you have no interest in the gloves
• Removed a popular PvP game and brought back the old one
• Removed old skins and added new ones
• Less grindy achievements, but easier overall
• Removed the “Mad Realm” world boss
• Removed the Mad King boss fight
• Items from Halloween vendor is expensive

As of today when the daily resets, you can complete all of the Halloween achievements and Halloween is going to last until November 11th.

Redenaz.8631:

I think Sonder the Seller’s new rewards have been a disaster for morale all around. They give new options for spending candy, which sounds like it should be pure upside…but those options are out of reach for most everyone who isn’t filthy rich, which is worse than not being presented the option at all. Maybe the supply will go up before the end of Halloween, but right now it’s looking even worse than Dragon Bash’s Jorbreakers, which were at least mitigated by the fact that their prize could drop randomly.

This. People took one look at the materials needed to get the new skins and realized they were impossible to obtain. I think it sapped a lot of enthusiasm out of the event.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Redenaz.8631:

I think Sonder the Seller’s new rewards have been a disaster for morale all around. They give new options for spending candy, which sounds like it should be pure upside…but those options are out of reach for most everyone who isn’t filthy rich, which is worse than not being presented the option at all. Maybe the supply will go up before the end of Halloween, but right now it’s looking even worse than Dragon Bash’s Jorbreakers, which were at least mitigated by the fact that their prize could drop randomly.

This. People took one look at the materials needed to get the new skins and realized they were impossible to obtain. I think it sapped a lot of enthusiasm out of the event.

True, but then we’re talking about pure grind goals. I detest the lemming / zerg mentality w/ intensity. All this halloween event seem to be about is an endless zerg inside labyrinth to gain meta achievement. Where’s the exploration from last year? Why work so hard to make chokezones out of the game by gathering everyone there? Reuse old content (fine), but refuse to bring back the achievements? Why not continue to build upon last year instead of turning it into an insane grind mess for unreachable goals. The 20slot bag should be a perk for participating, not 4x more expensive than a usual 20slotter.

Add to that the kittened amount of HP on the legendary bosses inside the Labyrinth. This all feels rushed to me, and w/ an almost sniper lvl of attention added to remove every inch of incentive to actually have fun doing things.

I don’t even know what was good about it last year. Its just a huge zergfest and a mess of particle effects.

For a start, what kind of a maze gives you a map of said maze?

hmm slightly sidetracking – what’s the quickest way to get the 50 doors achievement? in the laby or out in the open world?

i never spent much time inside the laby last year iirc. mainly doing Clocktower :// but the bosses thsi time around definitely take a long time.

Akamon, I’ll guess in the labyrinth. I wasn’t counting exactly but it felt like I hit ten doors in Gendarran and got maybe 2 events. It’s hard to say since I also found a lot of already open doors with no critters or bags.

As far as ramping up things — something mysterious is happening in the lake in the middle of Kessex. There’s a scholar camp up on the nw shore just south of the centaur bridge, if you want to talk to NPCs about what’s going on. Marjorie and Kasmeer are there. Apparently it’s super hot and even Kasmeer is sweating.

^ Definitely inside the Labyrinth. New doors spawn about once every 4 – 5 mins, and they are ALWAYS events. In the open world, about half the doors are Treat doors that just disappear after giving a ToT Bag, and there’s only a partial chance that if it’s a Trick door, it actually spawns an event. (More likely it just spawns one normal enemy, and after you kill it, the door functions as a portal into the Mad Realm.)

For me personally, I’m definitely enjoying the Bloody Prince story. The banter between him and Thorn in the Labyrinth is absolutely hilarious. XD And throwing rolls of Toilet Paper at Edrick just cracked me up. The new Labyrinth bosses, while still in need of some improvement, are at least new and engaging. I wasn’t that big a fan of Lunatic Inquisition last year, but after some experience with Southsun Survival, I’m now appreciating the Inquisition more.

However, it does seem like the unique rewards for Halloween 2013 have been either scaled back (Clocktower gloves are once per account now instead of once per character), are not returning (chainsaws, Grinning Ghost shield etc.) or been priced so high (new MF recipes) that it feels a bit like ANet is “holding back the good stuff”. Couple that with the fact that newer players (or those who missed out last year) can’t complete the achievements/titles for things like the Clocktower and Pumpkin Carving and it all leaves a rather sour taste in the mouth for what should have been a fun-filled month. It just reinforces the “get it NOW or you’ll miss out forever” feeling we’ve been having lately, and it’s getting very tiresome.

Combination of some things we wanted back weren’t brought back, but things we don’t care about were, not enough new content, limited BL weapon skin choices (just 5), increased prices, and high expectations.

Rewards are worse, content is mostly the same.

I also don’t remember people praising it that much last year, the most positive reception I remember it getting was all because of the soon-to-be-nerfed loot drops. Once the loot was nerfed I didn’t hear much about it.

Are you remembering last year with rose tinted glasses?

@Donari and Zax – thanks, folk. i’ll head back in tonight. : ))

Well. I think this is one of those “can’t win” situations for them but for me Halloween event this year isn’t particularly fun. Below are the reasons:

Jumping puzzle. They removed other players from the jumping puzzle. A great deal of the fun came from jumping with other players. I tried it once this year and don’t see much reason to go back there for more.

Material grind. Those numbers are way out of my comfort zone so essentially there’s no point for me to even try gathering halloween materials which basically eliminates reason to do doors and labyrinth.

Remove the need to play the labyrinth and to door hunting and remove the jumping puzzle and there’s not really anything for me here. As far as I’m concerned the only thing to do this year is the mad king says when he pops up and that doesn’t carry for very long. I hope the dungeon at least returns.

Also as some have mentioned there was a build-up period last years. It was nice. What used to be not nice were the one day deals. Not the build up and pacing the event itself.