Guild Wars 2

“Mad King Spam”, As I’ve come to call it, is getting out of hand.

It’s essentially when a ghost chases after you, but, finding their ‘4’ key broken and teamwork overrated, spams 6-0.

Again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

It’s not that much of a problem if the only one doing it is your occasional ghost that has no idea how to play, or if the only used one at a time. But right now, any villager will tell you that on the run you’re constantly being demanded to stop what you’re doing and spend no less than three to five seconds channeling emotes that you can’t escape from, lest you suffer a stun and damage. It’s a constant string of demands(or stuns/damage, if you choose to try to keep running). A mob of ghosts can just do one after the other without any sort of cooldown in place to help you stay ahead of them. I’ve begun to witness ghosts forsaking the ‘4’ key’s teleport entirely in favor of just mashing mad king orders.

This has to stop.

Is it really too much to ask to give the mad king orders a global(6-0 keys) cooldown of maybe 15-30 seconds?

I haven’t played this other than the short game i needed for the daily…but it REALLY sounds like you are calling other players bad while at the same time whining about not being able to play through the game mechanics.

sirflamesword.3896:

I haven’t played this other than the short game i needed for the daily…but it REALLY sounds like you are calling other players bad while at the same time whining about not being able to play through the game mechanics.

I don’t fault you for that. I admittedly worded it badly.

I just want a cooldown or something on the Mad King abilities, so that they can’t be spammed ridiculously to make it impossible to move without hearing “YOUR MAD KING SAYS…”

Frosty and Frosty Law Firm.4981:

sirflamesword.3896:

I haven’t played this other than the short game i needed for the daily…but it REALLY sounds like you are calling other players bad while at the same time whining about not being able to play through the game mechanics.

I don’t fault you for that. I admittedly worded it badly.

I just want a cooldown or something on the Mad King abilities, so that they can’t be spammed ridiculously to make it impossible to move without hearing “YOUR MAD KING SAYS…”

Ah then I take back what I said.

It just kinda irritates me that villagers are punished for being successful while ghosts are rewarded for lacking teamwork or method to their madness.

Perhaps make it so that if the villager successfully performs the action, the ghost who initiated it is killed? That makes it a real risk to use unless the ghost is sure they can close the distance and kill the villager before they finish performing the action.

Last year, this was my favorite minigame. Villagers in my experience tended to have about a 40-60% win-rate.

Now, in my experience, villagers tend to have around a 2-5% win-rate, and usually only when a ghost purposely afks or otherwise allows the villagers to gain an early advantage.

I think you’re sort of getting at a bigger problem. Any mechanic that ghosts have can in some way be countered, including commands. You can LoS them, or interrupt them with timing and the right items. With some cleverness you can pull off stealth tricks or simply just eat the damage and the short stun if they use a hex with a long cast-time. That’s fine, in my opinion. One villager can outplay a ghost for a small amount of time, but it shouldn’t be possible for a villager to stand toe-to-toe with a ghost in the first place. That’s why you start with only one ghost.

That’s the key point. This year, I’m sure many people have noticed that for whatever reasons, scores of people simply purposely march up to be killed, and the game starts off with anywhere from 3-5 ghosts. Villagers simply don’t have a chance against this kind of griefing / achievement farming / I’m too lazy to play with my wits and teamwork.

That’s pretty much the tipping point. Starting with only one ghost and using proper teamwork, you could surround him and slow him enough that even the best ghost, dodging counterattacks from villagers and locking down single targets, would still take awhile to kill his first target. The growth of ghosts is exponential, so to start with more than one is just the last straw of overpoweredness.

In the end, something has to give. Either somehow put in some safeguards against people who purposely turn into ghosts, or remove some of their power. Currently they get

-Heavy damage up-front
-Practically infinite single-target lockdown
-Teleport skill and teleport pads
-Traps
-Item denial
-Radar

Most ghosts I’ve seen don’t even attempt to set traps or deny items to villagers, nor use radar, and yet ghosts are winning every game now. Either take off some of their original edge, or put some sort of safeguard to people who intentionally become ghosts.

While someone might argue that purposely dying might be “in the theme” of the minigame, I’d argue that allowing such a huge win rate for one side is unconscionable. It’s the very definition of a broken game when one side wins 95% of their games. I understand how villagers are probably not intended to win very often (evidenced by how they get more reward bags than if everyone gets killed), but this seems like too much to me.

I’d appreciate a red post in response to the subject. Anything that we come up with is conjecture until they respond “intended” or not. A yearly minigame might seem like something small to complain about, but it is rather important to me. It was very fun, challenging, and rewarding when people weren’t actively seeking to ruin the fun for others.

No word from Anet, so we can safely assume that they’ve ignored the suggestions.