Guild Wars 2

If saving civilians gave decent rewards, it would return to the tagging system. People would complain about having their civilians ninja’d.

Healix.5819:

If saving civilians gave decent rewards, it would return to the tagging system. People would complain about having their civilians ninja’d.

They need more widespread escort/freedom missions that are more about the civilians cowering in place while people clear out a small area around them. Then you get the rewards of mob loot, plus the satisfaction of saving people. Maybe the civilians auto-release after a successful event en masse or some other mechanic that prevent them from being ninja’able.

They tried this with the escort missions, but the people careening through mobs upon mobs of aoe when you’re just one guy is… a nightmare. And then even if they do make it and you participated via heals and swiftness, you don’t get credit unless you downed an enemy that spawned as part of the event and not one of the trash mobs along the way. The current escort missions are okay for zerging. But they do not encourage overall civilian rescue.

Maybe so many people have to tag citizens before the citizen gets the morale to leave? And as thanks, they offer up some small event reward. That way, you can have multiple people tag the “node” before it depletes. I can see why tags of citizens by infinite players (like on an ore node) would lead to a sort of unwanted inflation in numbers, so maybe this could be a good compromise?

I’d love to see more ideas on how to make rescuing citizens as rewarding as the zerg, in any case :)

After becoming increasingly frustrated with the lack of organization and / or communication in any of the mains or overflow Escape from Lions Arch maps, I have decided to organize a guild of players who are actually willing to leave the zerg and break off into smaller squads of search and rescue. The idea is to get people working together if we ever want a chance at 1500 saves. I am hoping that this will turn into a large group of cross server players whose sole goal is to see those saved citizen numbers increase (similar to how TTS and TXS organized to do Teq). Initially we need the player base and eventually we can organize taxi’s onto overflows to group together.

We are small and growing and have already seen good success, increasing the average number of saves from 600’s to 1000+’s in the LA map we are in… and that is with LESS THAN 15 PEOPLE. Just imagine what 20 or even 30 dedicated MEDx could do for the map.

So are you tired of failing to see large numbers of saved citizens? Not when the Lion’s Arch Search and Rescue (MEDx) are on the scene. No rep required.

PM UraniumLobster.2348, MurdaManG.7402, or Armonite red.8546 for information or invitation.
This is currently an NA operation; we’d love to have an EU counterpart!

One other way to really stop the zerging is to pool all the bags (not champ boxes) that are dropped. Every 10 citizens saved drops 1 bag per player on the map into the pool. At the end of the 45 minutes total up the time spent by all players on the map, and then divide up the loot based on that.

Oh and set the idle timer in LA to 5 minutes, so if you haven’t moved or done anything for 5 minutes you get booted back to the log in screen. Or put in a 1% rule. If the top player kills 500 mobs and you’ve killed less than 5 then you don’t get loot. Though the 1% still means that people only go out till they kill enough and then go hide back at the way point.

This will pool all the bag drops, so that those zerging help those saving citizens, and those saving citizens are helping those who are zerging.

Like many, I really enjoyed the event, particularly the environment and the chaotic atmosphere it created. That said, very little about this makes any sense.

1. The primary objective of saving citizens is not rewarded well incrementally, as in the gaps between Group Effort Bags are too far between and/or the rewards just aren’t there.

2. Expecting a higher level of coordination to achieve 1500 is understandable, but the overflow fiasco ensures that such a level is typically unattainable. Think FOTM, but every now and then we’re going to force kick someone from your group.

All this does is create a situation where those who play selfishly(ie solely for champs and loot bags) are rewarded. I mean…you don’t even get anything for rezzing or escorting civilians. Really not a hard fix from a design standpoint, but wait, it gets better.

Those same people can spend bag rewards on sprockets, crafting materials, levels, ranks…I really don’t care to continue…

Great event, but at the same time, what a mess.

Khisanth.2948:

Zerging is still the best way to win if winning means getting the most loot. As an example, some people have mentioned that you get 100 of the bags for reaching 1000 saved. Meanwhile the farmers were getting over 200 already.

Ofcourse, which is the problem. The most loot should be by getting the most civilians to safety, not by tagging mobs, we already have enough content with that.

The problem I mentioned is that you can run in a zerg, get those 200 bags, and STILL get that extra 100 bags from not even helping a single civilian, whilst the guys who did this, got the same reward, minus the 200 other bags.

It’s all wrong. There should be this reward everyone gets, but getting no personal reward at all for saving civilians and escorting them is bonkers. By adding rewards to civilians it gives atleast something for going out there.

In concern to tagging civilians, personally I think they should’ve packed the civilians together. You “collect” or “gather” the civilians by clicking them as part of an event, they rally at a spot and when enough are there, you escort them. No HUGE waves of tough mobs needs to be required. Staying in that circle with the civilians for X amount of time until the very end should earn yourself the reward.

The goal of this event is clearly to have three groups working together to rescue citizens. We are supposed to split into a forum group, a fort group and an estern LA group.

Arikyali.5804:

First off, Anet, you guys did a pretty darn good job. I really like the event. I love the concept, I love the design team’s burning chaotic city, and I love hating you guys for demolishing all that is Lion’s Arch. I love having the chance to take my stealthy thief out in PvE. I also like you’re taking a proactive step with breaking up mindless zergfest.

…The problem is that most people don’t know that.

We still have players tagging up shouting, ‘Stack on me to win this event!’ People are still zerging for peanut loot bags, and people bypass the dead and terrified citizens. No one seems to understand that saving the citizens of LA is a map-wide effort, and best done by actually saving its citizens. On the first day, my server managed to save close to a thousand people, but I haven’t seen that since. It’s usually stuck around 500.

I get bored of zerging, and have had at more times struck out on my own, or with small groups of players. But there have been one or two times where I’m fighting alone, and someone just runs past without assisting because they’re trying to get to the next zerg event.

Zerging is counter-productive. It scales up events, and it distracts people from saving the scared citizens. Breaking up the zerg needs to be more obvious. There is more loot gained based on the citizens you saved, but everyone will keep zerging because 1) they don’t know there’s a chance to get better loot, or 2) they know, but since too much don’t know/don’t care they’ll just go back to zerging. Basic zerg loot is better than solo loot, if only 500 people are gonna get saving.

I know these events are meant to be ’don’t need an instruction manual and everyone figues it out in five minutes’….but no one’s figured it out.

I feel that each time I go “outside” an orange circle I am getting much less than the “zerg” – if it’s not true my bronze and silvers aren’t telling the truth… I kill a LOT of NPC and rescue and rez a LOT of people per LA event.

It’s got to be fixed and the people instructed a bit…

Seras.5702:

Mikuchan.7261:

They have made an attempt, sure.
But that doesn’t change the fact that there is no direct encouragement for helping citizens. All you see is a number rise, you don’t get anything direct from it.

False. Each milestone of citizens saved gets you a bonus reward bag. The more citizens you save, the more reward bags you get. Also, you get a final reward at the end based on your citizens saved. Again, the more you save, the better the reward.

The fault isn’t with the event. The fault lies with the selfish & lazy zergers who want to autoattack en masse for blue bags rather than win the event. Effort is required to save 1500 instead of 600.

And as for people still zerging and not learning, I recently got my Triple Play achievement yesterday. That’s a zone-wide achievement and it means people are learning how to play properly rather than mindlessly zerging for loot. Anet doesn’t have to spell it out for us. We should have to learn the right mechanics & strategy to win.

Notice the keyword “direct” ?
No? Didn’t think so.
The tiers are indirect encouragement.
You don’t get them directly from rescuing citizen.
You get them when a certain tier of a number of citizen has been rescued.

The encouragement lies in zerging. That’s where the loot is.

And no matter how hard you try to call them selfish, you are actually the selfish one.
You are running around on your own only minding your business.
The majority of the people are helping eachother kill enemies and get loot.
-Helping eachother-
You’re not helping the majority of the players.
If you were, you would be zerging with them.

This is why the event, just like the earlier invasions, is designed completely wrong.
The incentive lies in zerging, not doing the actual content.

Maybe they should periodically display this message in chat in order to ram it into the heads of most players. I’d bet a large number of players don’t even know this.

For players who attain the highest tier of 1500 citizens saved, there’s a chance for ascended materials and rewards from previous Living World releases.

I wonder if most people realize that to reach 1500 survivors we need to successfully complete most of the events, plus escort the individual villagers and clean the escape route. Miasma events give 5 citizens, and if all three are cleared we gain 35 citizens. Every escort event give 5 citizens. Every boss defeated (Wurm Queen, Berzerker, Aether elites) saves 10 citizens. The defend rally also saves citizens, but I don’t know how many.

The thing is that every one of those events scale heavily with the number of people. So we need to split the zerg in commandos of about 10 people to stay at zone to finish events quickly, and some groups just rescuing civilians.

Durrik.4679:

One other way to really stop the zerging is to pool all the bags (not champ boxes) that are dropped. Every 10 citizens saved drops 1 bag per player on the map into the pool. At the end of the 45 minutes total up the time spent by all players on the map, and then divide up the loot based on that.

Oh and set the idle timer in LA to 5 minutes, so if you haven’t moved or done anything for 5 minutes you get booted back to the log in screen. Or put in a 1% rule. If the top player kills 500 mobs and you’ve killed less than 5 then you don’t get loot. Though the 1% still means that people only go out till they kill enough and then go hide back at the way point.

This will pool all the bag drops, so that those zerging help those saving citizens, and those saving citizens are helping those who are zerging.

So anyone who dc part way through is totally screwed.
Zerging is also the best option for getting the maximum number of kills. That is why it is so good for loot. What exactly are you trying to accomplish with your suggestion? Oh and if you think kill credit should be on last hit then anyone relying on condition damage is going to get heavily penalized.

The 1% thing would just encourage people to be more selfish. Why bother helping other people anymore? More dead players means fewer competition.

the only thing i hate is the combination of the following facts:

i am a gamer. i play to win. i don’t understand people who play and don’t care about winning. i’m not a role-player, but i severely enjoy immersion. when the event is to save people and i’m surrounded by people who don’t care, this bothers me. i like feeling that we have people to save…and hate that i am surrounded by people who choose NOT be immersed which pulls me out of my own immersion.

since inception this game was touted as a game that would have these stories drive it forward and be ever changing and yet for some reason the number of people who care about the story and playing to the mechanics (rather than using/abusing them) seem wildly outnumbered by people who don’t care about anything the game has proposed, offered, and delivered to us.

i think this thought a lot when i’m playing:
in another 2+ years, this game is going to be unbelievably amazing… why? because the only people left will be people who truly care about it, truly love it, and truly want to play what we are given.
it really is NOT anet’s fault for when we cannot win or when things don’t go right or when people cannot work together. this community is constantly failing itself. i love this game but the vast number of “nerf this” or “change that” or “give us this” threads are ridiculous at this point. the content and its mechanics have been relatively consistent. it just boils down to why so many people choose not to play as intended. “because the content/rewards/story sucks” is not an answer…if people are going to constantly hide behind that statement then why are they even here? let those of us who do NOT think this game sucks enjoy what we are supposed to be doing already.

Arikyali.5804:

Zerging is counter-productive. It scales up events, and it distracts people from saving the scared citizens. Breaking up the zerg needs to be more obvious.

What you describe here is my biggest problem with this latest LS.
You start with three big groups, one at each entrance. And at each entrance (inside LA) a big group event starts (stopping that miasma thingie). After that, the groups should disperse into smaller groups. However, you’re in an overflow, and unless you play on an American server, chances are, a lot of people don’t speak your language (I’ve only once been on home server). People have been trained by now (by ANet) to follow a leader: the commander tags. So, let’s say there are 5 on the map. You’ll have 5 groups.

Also, ever tried to go out with a small group? It’ll take ages to get from one area to the next, due to the elites that are everywhere. I always thought they were added to help the scaling. But, apparently I was wrong, and they were added to punish the small groups. So, in order to make some progress you have to form large groups, and you’ll have a viscous circle… There are also no normal events around, only group events, which start off scaled towards a large zerg. If there’s only 5 to 10 people around, the event will probably fail within a minute. Simply because the people will be overwhelmed by the elites.

Again, this LS could be great fun. Four or five larger groups, clearing the larger defend and escort events, and lots of smaller groups (2-5 people), clearing the rest of the foes to help the people escape Lion’s Arch. The first is already possible, the second only a way to get frustrated…

Khisanth.2948:

Durrik.4679:

One other way to really stop the zerging is to pool all the bags (not champ boxes) that are dropped. Every 10 citizens saved drops 1 bag per player on the map into the pool. At the end of the 45 minutes total up the time spent by all players on the map, and then divide up the loot based on that.

Oh and set the idle timer in LA to 5 minutes, so if you haven’t moved or done anything for 5 minutes you get booted back to the log in screen. Or put in a 1% rule. If the top player kills 500 mobs and you’ve killed less than 5 then you don’t get loot. Though the 1% still means that people only go out till they kill enough and then go hide back at the way point.

This will pool all the bag drops, so that those zerging help those saving citizens, and those saving citizens are helping those who are zerging.

So anyone who dc part way through is totally screwed.
Zerging is also the best option for getting the maximum number of kills. That is why it is so good for loot. What exactly are you trying to accomplish with your suggestion? Oh and if you think kill credit should be on last hit then anyone relying on condition damage is going to get heavily penalized.

The 1% thing would just encourage people to be more selfish. Why bother helping other people anymore? More dead players means fewer competition.

Maybe I should have explained the ‘add up all the time’ part a bit better.

Say you have 5 players, and 450 citizens saved, and 400 bags dropped from kills.

Player 1 & 2: full event 45 minutes
Player 3: Jumped in at 10 minutes and went to the end (35 minutes)
Player 4: Disconnected at 30 minute mark ( 15 minutes)
Player 5: Jumped in at 10 minutes and disconnected at 30 minute mark (20 minutes)

If you go with a even distribution of citizens saved, 10 per minute (for this example), there would be 160 bags added to the pot.

The chest at the end for the players would be:

Player 1 & 2: 157 bags
Player 3: 122 bags
Player 4: 52 bags
Player 5: 70 bags
because of rounding 2 bags out of the 560 didn’t go out, call it the house percentage.

The example was simplified, and you can do better data tracking and logging through out the entire event then just a couple of simple numbers.

But for this to really work you have to make sure that the people AFKing don’t get it, either set the AFK timer to 5 minutes like the Sanctum Sprint, or some other way of determining that the person hasn’t done anything during the event. Maybe something like counting how many hits a person got in on the enemy plus the number of citizens they rezed/encouraged and there’s a threshold. I don’t like the 1% idea I just don’t know of a better way to say things for it

effinshiddy.1364:

it really is NOT anet’s fault for when we cannot win or when things don’t go right or when people cannot work together. this community is constantly failing itself. i love this game but the vast number of “nerf this” or “change that” or “give us this” threads are ridiculous at this point. the content and its mechanics have been relatively consistent. it just boils down to why so many people choose not to play as intended. “because the content/rewards/story sucks” is not an answer…if people are going to constantly hide behind that statement then why are they even here? let those of us who do NOT think this game sucks enjoy what we are supposed to be doing already.

For several Reasons most Players tend to play the way that yields most rewards (especially in a MMORPG). If you would really want Players to work together to archieve an Objective, don’t throw rewards at them for doing something counter-productive…

Seras.5702:

Congratulations. Everyone else did what was needed while you reaped the rewards doing nothing productive. Your story is anecdotal and proves nothing. The facts of the event remain.

I was doing something productive. I got heirlooms, 50 bags and an achievement. I was burdened with the reward for something I had no intention of being a part of. Anecdotal or not, the story proves what I said in my opening statement: “The zone-wide achievements are rubbish and indicative of nothing.” You can be the best player ever and fail the achievements time and time again because you can’t control other players, or you can get the achievements without even being aware that you were in the running for them during your time in the zone. Rubbish.

Seras.5702:

Nothing learned? That’s your short-coming. Clearly you’re not enjoying the event and that’s your prerogative. You judge the mechanics by your achievements and not the success of the event. I’m glad you’re not going back in because I’d like to think the people in my overflow are working together for higher rewards.

It’s not my shortcoming, it’s the content’s shortcoming. I got achievements for free. Any further effort on my part to learn about those achievements is time wasted, because I can’t do them again. Knowing about them has no practical purpose, nor any theoretical value at this time. The game robbed me of the opportunity to play for them by awarding them undeservedly. I consider it rubbish content anyway, so I don’t really care either way.

Lastly, I find it extremely saddening that something with such amazing graphical design and depth of detail in the look-and-feel, is brought low by such weak gameplay.

Arikyali.5804:

*Zerging is counter-productive. It scales up events, and it distracts people from saving the scared citizens.

The main problem of this event is that it isn’t. It’s only counterproductive if your goal is to save citizens. It is extremely productive if your goal is to maximize personal rewards. No events should be designed in a way where success requires players sacrificing their rewards. Because most of them never will.

Many poeple don’t know that there is an hidden achievement at 100, 300, 600, 1000 and 1500 citizens rescued. I’m trying all day to get the one at 1500 but as only a few poeple save thems, I always end up at 800-1000 rescued.

Something should be changed here, like removing ALL loots rewards and give a reward to everyone that participated at the end based of the number of citizens saved. (Let’s say 1 bag every 5 citizen rescued, so that would be 300 bags at 1500 rescued).

The goal of the event is to save the citizen after all…

ive only run this event 5 times each with a full bar of aoe. so far ive dropped:
1 exotic potion @ 20g
1 rare potion @ 1g
100-150 silk @ 1s 3c
50 linen @ 6s 15c
50 wool @ 2s 70c
1 exotic mini @ 1g
a ton of other teir 5 and teir 6 loot from champ bags and salvage.

saving npcs is cool and all….

perhaps the real goal of this event is to flood the playerbase with extra gold before the next ascended crafting drops.

Lambent.6375:

Maybe they should periodically display this message in chat in order to ram it into the heads of most players. I’d bet a large number of players don’t even know this.

For players who attain the highest tier of 1500 citizens saved, there’s a chance for ascended materials and rewards from previous Living World releases.

Well, you know… I’m all for saving citizens. I’d love to focus on that. But when I do, I will work harder for much less reward in the same timeframe… which is something that most people will never do in an MMO. Also, if we reach 1500, I might get some bloodstone dust and a couple dragon coffers or maybe some azurite gems… well I can tell you, I neither need nor want any of those. I’ve got like 20 (or more) stacks of Bloodstone Dust taking away space in my bank already; I also still have a full stack of dragon coffers (don’t ask me why; I honestly don’t know) and Sentinel-gear is something that I will most likely never use on any of my characters.

It does come up in game saying to forget about the miasma level and save as many citizens as possible, but obviously people don’t read.

Three runs in a row today. Zero rewards given at the Civilian Escape Milestones. No bags, no heirlooms. Have they removed it?
So … is this the second patch now to make the heirloom harder to get? Were we collecting them too fast for Anet?

Smooth Penguin.5294:

I tried this with TTS last nite, and we came close in my run. I think we were short maybe ~90 people? They attempted to try it again during Oceanic time, but I’m not sure if they succeeded. It’s really really hard to get 1500, but not impossible.

You should have stuck around for the run after, we managed to get 1500, on the following run and the oceanic managed to get 1604!

Healix.5819:

If saving civilians gave decent rewards, it would return to the tagging system. People would complain about having their civilians ninja’d.

Just make them drop bags, when they tagged. Like it was on wintersday with presents. U tag him, and he drops bag for everyone, who is nearby.

Truthfully, 150 players in a map should be able to save 10 ppl. I’m doing 25-30 almost every run and we usually end up at the 500-700 mark.

Would have been a good idea to have a title for persons saved.

I bet if the upper echelons of the reward tiers had a integral part in obtaining the meta achievement, saving citizens would not be a issue. It would be a group/zone wide effort person to person.

Events like this should resemble dungeons. You get an end chest, but you also get the guaranteed tokens. Take SAB trib for instance. You are collecting baubles and also getting a token for completion.

Scarlet Invasion/Escape from LA is an example of how not to do things. The End Reward must be greater than the gold you can earn leading up to The End Reward.

LadyRhonwyn.2501:

Arikyali.5804:

Zerging is counter-productive. It scales up events, and it distracts people from saving the scared citizens. Breaking up the zerg needs to be more obvious.

What you describe here is my biggest problem with this latest LS.
You start with three big groups, one at each entrance. And at each entrance (inside LA) a big group event starts (stopping that miasma thingie). After that, the groups should disperse into smaller groups. However, you’re in an overflow, and unless you play on an American server, chances are, a lot of people don’t speak your language (I’ve only once been on home server). People have been trained by now (by ANet) to follow a leader: the commander tags. So, let’s say there are 5 on the map. You’ll have 5 groups.

Also, ever tried to go out with a small group? It’ll take ages to get from one area to the next, due to the elites that are everywhere. I always thought they were added to help the scaling. But, apparently I was wrong, and they were added to punish the small groups. So, in order to make some progress you have to form large groups, and you’ll have a viscous circle… There are also no normal events around, only group events, which start off scaled towards a large zerg. If there’s only 5 to 10 people around, the event will probably fail within a minute. Simply because the people will be overwhelmed by the elites.

Again, this LS could be great fun. Four or five larger groups, clearing the larger defend and escort events, and lots of smaller groups (2-5 people), clearing the rest of the foes to help the people escape Lion’s Arch. The first is already possible, the second only a way to get frustrated…

5-10 shouldn’t have any problem with any of the events. The events should not start scaled for a large group unless you also happen to have a large group of kittens running through each event but not actually stopping to do them. The rally point defense events can be handled by 2-3 people, at least for fort marriner and postern ward. I’ve done those a couple of times that way. There were some close calls but that had more to do with arriving late at the event.

The goals of this event are not clear at all.
People see the events pop up, of course they’re gonne go there.
Where is it said that the main objective is to save the citizens?
When you look at the UI, it looks more like saving the citizens is a side quest.

Mikal Dynath.6195:

Three runs in a row today. Zero rewards given at the Civilian Escape Milestones. No bags, no heirlooms. Have they removed it?
So … is this the second patch now to make the heirloom harder to get? Were we collecting them too fast for Anet?

Sounds like you had the misfortune of doing the event in a non-overflow. There is a bug where the citizen count is not getting reset/counted correctly.

- Adjusted reward tiers to award at 100, 300, 600, 900, and 1200 citizens rescued.

Now the countdown begins until “1200 citizens is too hard” thread.

TTS has been doing 1500 citizen runs. I have yet to see anything of value drop. Individual players see less loot doing these runs in hope for something rare at the end, but just like everything else in the game, the rewards aren’t worth it.

Stick to the zergs and the 500 citizens saved. You’ll get more loot and you’re not missing out on anything.

a rare, 5 heirlooms and 4 Salvageable Fused Metal Scraps, 12 dragonite, 10 blade shard, 10 found belongings.

That was so worth it. -_-

i got a 6g exotic pants (sold to the only buy order for it on tp) and an exotic axe Knot of Justice which was 1g from 1 ultimate bag.

I also heard there’s a chance for pre from it.

Vilaptca.6037:

TTS has been doing 1500 citizen runs. I have yet to see anything of value drop. Individual players see less loot doing these runs in hope for something rare at the end, but just like everything else in the game, the rewards aren’t worth it.

Stick to the zergs and the 500 citizens saved. You’ll get more loot and you’re not missing out on anything.

And this is why the whole event is once again a brilliant idea on paper, but sub-par execution in reality ruins it. Saving 1500 citizens is so rare and requires so much co-ordination there better be good rewards in the end, but hearing this… I’ll just stick to the zerging.

Once again the challenge is getting enough guildies into the right map…

Whitey.6185:

It does come up in game saying to forget about the miasma level and save as many citizens as possible, but obviously people don’t read.

I’ve always interpreted that as “Don’t worry about the Miasma, it’s not lethal yet! Continue to save citizens (aka what you’re already doing, since you save citizens with all the events as well)!”

NTDK.4897:

i got a 6g exotic pants (sold to the only buy order for it on tp) and an exotic axe Knot of Justice which was 1g from 1 ultimate bag.

I also heard there’s a chance for pre from it.

EVERYTHING you kill in the game has a chance of dropping a precursor. Killing piles and piles of mobs gives you a lot more loot rolls.

Mikal Dynath.6195:

Three runs in a row today. Zero rewards given at the Civilian Escape Milestones. No bags, no heirlooms. Have they removed it?

I had that happen my first time in last night. It’s gotta be a bug. I was awarded the bags in my other runs.

Sariel V.7024:

Mikal Dynath.6195:

Three runs in a row today. Zero rewards given at the Civilian Escape Milestones. No bags, no heirlooms. Have they removed it?

I had that happen my first time in last night. It’s gotta be a bug. I was awarded the bags in my other runs.

Maybe they’ve made it a once per day per account thing.

UraniumLobster.2348:

After becoming increasingly frustrated with the lack of organization and / or communication in any of the mains or overflow Escape from Lions Arch maps, I have decided to organize a guild of players who are actually willing to leave the zerg and break off into smaller squads of search and rescue. The idea is to get people working together if we ever want a chance at 1500 saves. I am hoping that this will turn into a large group of cross server players whose sole goal is to see those saved citizen numbers increase (similar to how TTS and TXS organized to do Teq). Initially we need the player base and eventually we can organize taxi’s onto overflows to group together.

We are small and growing and have already seen good success, increasing the average number of saves from 600’s to 1000+’s in the LA map we are in… and that is with LESS THAN 15 PEOPLE. Just imagine what 20 or even 30 dedicated MEDx could do for the map.

So are you tired of failing to see large numbers of saved citizens? Not when the Lion’s Arch Search and Rescue (MEDx) are on the scene. No rep required.

PM UraniumLobster.2348, MurdaManG.7402, or Armonite red.8546 for information or invitation.
This is currently an NA operation; we’d love to have an EU counterpart!

I wasn’t going to mention this guild without seeing a post first. I joined in on their last run before the update last night. [MEDx] broke 1500, in overflow. Clearly, they’ve channeled the anger correctly.

Search and Rescue quickly bloated and took over two overflows the next run, getting them both to the new max of 1200. Not as good as they had been doing, but good enough. The main problem? Zerging on the miasma events by nonguild and guild members.

I worry [MEDx] will become victims of their success and start absorbing leechers that won’t quit with the zerg mentality. If that’s you, please, go bother someone else. I’m having a lot more fun running escorts through Eastern Ward with actual parties ;D

So, i got it in SOR recently, but i wanted to ask. Does anyone know if the 5AP from it is repeatable?

PseudoNewb.5468:

So, i got it in SOR recently, but i wanted to ask. Does anyone know if the 5AP from it is repeatable?

According to dulfy you get the AP once the first time you hit each tier.

Yeah I guess not.

OP – Update:

I was very pleased to see that the reward markers have been changed, so that 1200 is the new top level (far better than 1500). For such a change to have come in indicates that the lack of achievement was so severe that the developers were getting a very clear picture of the problem. (It must be quite something when an event like this requires the Tequatl killing guild on the case to actually hit the max target….it was not meant to be as hard as, say, the jungle wurm).

I`m only part pleased, however, as the social mechanics still encourage zerging and the citizen rescue counter is still counter-intuitive to how everyone thinks the event is asking them to play. More changes are needed, emphasising individual rescue and moving into the less travelled parts of the map. There are great ideas suggested by posters in this topic and others…lets hope more changes come before the event fades away.

Seras.5702:

Manasa Devi.7958:

The zone-wide achievements are rubbish and indicative of nothing. I completed almost all achievements without lifting a finger or even realizing what I needed to do for them. I still don’t know that for some of them, and don’t care to, because I already have them. It happened when I was just exploring and looking for rubble. I just needed to do some more escort events and some of the events that spawn at 40 minutes.

Mission accomplished, nothing learned, not planning to go back in there because it’s boring.

Congratulations. Everyone else did what was needed while you reaped the rewards doing nothing productive. Your story is anecdotal and proves nothing. The facts of the event remain.

Nothing learned? That’s your short-coming. Clearly you’re not enjoying the event and that’s your prerogative. You judge the mechanics by your achievements and not the success of the event. *I’m glad you’re not going back in because I’d like to think the people in my overflow are working together for higher rewards. *

If you take away the incentive to farm you will have very very few going back in. Thats what happened at the Scarlet INvasions.

ArenaNet may have lowered this limit but it doesn’t change the basic problem of NOT teling people what needs to be done. This should be made clear in the game. The only reason I found out about the actual objective of the event was that I asked in Map Chat.

However, I realize now that Map Chat neglected to mention I needed to interact with citizens with the orange fists over their heads. I saw a few of these NPCs during the event (presumably others were getting to them first) but when I clicked on one nothing seemed to happen (likely due to lag) so I ignored them for the rest of the event. I went around rezzing dead citizens since I figured that was rescuing them and doing events that showed up on the map.

The game should be providing that critical piece of information, not other players. As much as I enjoyed the lore and seeing this momentous event in the game, the actual mechanics of what we’re supposed to do are not presented in a clear manner.

I also want to note I was looking this up on the official wiki and nowhere does it mention this mechanic in any of the pages of the event . I had to go to Reddit to find it out.

This issue goes all the way back to launch with things like the Dodge mechanic. I knew players who tried GW2 and never knew they could dodge because the game never explained it. The best game design in the world does not matter if the time and effort is not spent explaining the mechanics to the players.

ArenaNet seems to be learning this, we’ve heard they are implementing a much-needed tutorial for their China release. They still need work on making sure they communicate critical information their players need to know in the game.

Buffy.9246:

Anet won’t do this…it’s been a pattern for living stories. Look at queen’s jubilee, nightmare tower, Scarlett’s invasions. Anet is just so set minded on mega zergs to do anything in this game.

Very true and I find it ironic, since around launch time they ruined the range and functionality of in zone event notifications because players were being too “zergy”. I think they over-reacted to early game zergs, with new players and populations concentrated in starting zones with a bad design change that should have been reversed as soon as the population was more evenly spread out. Then, they pull a 180 and begin an ongoing trend of content design that’s completely zerg centric, either by intention or incidental to poor design.

What I hate most about this current event is that it should have been and could have been one of the most incredible experiences in an MMO, but, once again, they just couldn’t design it in a way that didn’t foster the zerg. (In fact, it’s hard to believe that many elements were not designed specifically to make zerging the obvious/safe/less frustrating course of action).

I think posters who say something like “good feedback for the future, but probably too late to save this one” are probably right on. The thing is that it’s deja vu all over again for me. It seems like almost every LS event since launch has been chock full of design short falls that have short circuited the obvious potential, yet they keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again, with little respite.

So, yeah, I can hope this time they learn something, but it’s not like an event like this can get a do-over. If you can’t get things like this right, put the idea way for some future time when maybe you will be capable of pulling it off. Too much of LS seems to be a seed of a cool idea planted in fallow soil and watered with sea water.

Quick Idea, this is guild wars isnt it. Just have someone at the entrance that guilds report too. Just like a real crises that someone coordinates relief efforts.

Guilds are supposed to be players of the same mind set. So the guild master could check in and report they brought members to help with resue or defense of civilians. Then bonus loot can be given to guilds who check in and everyone gets what they want.

The 1200 bag aside, any personal reward of peanut bags obtained from zergs will usually far eclipse the end reward.

Dilligaf Wyt.1867:

Quick Idea, this is guild wars isnt it. Just have someone at the entrance that guilds report too. Just like a real crises that someone coordinates relief efforts.

Guilds are supposed to be players of the same mind set. So the guild master could check in and report they brought members to help with resue or defense of civilians. Then bonus loot can be given to guilds who check in and everyone gets what they want.

Wait… why do we want to give guilds better rewards for showing up and doing the same thing as everyone else?