Guild Wars 2

If they meant for 18 chests to be aoption, it STILL would be. Why would they change something they intended to be in game?
They didn’t, they never expected people to go from one boss to the next, and farm them(now, the fact that didn’t think of this is a bit odd, but different topic.)

Not everyone plays just for loot though, and the proof was people trying the knights constantly with 0 loot, yeah they’d ask in chat if anyone got loot, but they still played it.

don’t focus so much on the loot you’re getting and enjoy the content for what it is.
__

If it turns out the 6 min achieve is unattainable, anet will change that. (just as they did with 1500 Civs to 1200.)

Taygus.4571:

If they meant for 18 chests to be aoption, it STILL would be. Why would they change something they intended to be in game?
They didn’t, they never expected people to go from one boss to the next, and farm them(now, the fact that didn’t think of this is a bit odd, but different topic.)

Not everyone plays just for loot though, and the proof was people trying the knights constantly with 0 loot, yeah they’d ask in chat if anyone got loot, but they still played it.

don’t focus so much on the loot you’re getting and enjoy the content for what it is.
__

If it turns out the 6 min achieve is unattainable, anet will change that. (just as they did with 1500 Civs to 1200.)

You never answserd my question is why getting that loot makes that much difference?

Plus if you read the initial notes it states “Legendary Assault Knights will drop 5 Deluxe Gear Boxes and a chance at an Assault Knight Power Core” which tells me that each one droped them.

People play mostly for the loot or chance of it. I am not going into if it is right or wrong, that is a whole different topic. But the fact is that many people are deciding to not participate in the event anymore due to it not being rewarding enough. This is a shame for those individuals that have yet to try the content and which will sadly be disappointed when not enought people start showing up for it.

Plus once again the people that could play all the time prior to the patch get rewarded greatly than those after the loot bug. They got tons of cores which they could profit on.

Taygus.4571:

don’t focus so much on the loot you’re getting and enjoy the content for what it is.
__

If it turns out the 6 min achieve is unattainable, anet will change that. (just as they did with 1500 Civs to 1200.)

First, after we’ve gone through the Scarlet hologram battle once… What other point, besides loot, is there to do it again?

As a ranger with a short bow, I pretty much just go on auto-attack and dodge during the Knight events (until they become susceptible to conditions)…

No one will want to do an 18 minute without rewards.

The Knights just aren’t that interesting of a fight. You grab the calibration, and then have it for the remainder of the battle.

No cool mechanics. You just dodge every now and then.

I can’t imagine anyone is getting the 6 minutes to Knightfall achievement now.

Especially since I’ve been in two events now where they failed.
Splitting up the zerg hasn’t made the event any easier.

Taygus.4571:

but they never intended for people to get THAT much loot. Geez, can’t people see that the beginning loot was a major bug?

Extract of text taken from the March 4th patch notes:

Legendary Assault Knights will drop 5 Deluxe Gear Boxes and a chance at an Assault Knight Power Core, which can be used to color the Tempered Spinal Blades back item. Defeating all three knights within 6 minutes will award several masterwork items, a luck bonus, 1 Obsidian Shard, and 5 Blade Shards.

It was absolutely intended. Your point is invalid.

Valandil Dragonhart.2371:

Taygus.4571:

but they never intended for people to get THAT much loot. Geez, can’t people see that the beginning loot was a major bug?

Extract of text taken from the March 4th patch notes:

Legendary Assault Knights will drop 5 Deluxe Gear Boxes and a chance at an Assault Knight Power Core, which can be used to color the Tempered Spinal Blades back item. Defeating all three knights within 6 minutes will award several masterwork items, a luck bonus, 1 Obsidian Shard, and 5 Blade Shards.

It was absolutely intended. Your point is invalid.

That is why I do not understand the change. Ok splitting the zerg up now into mini zergs I can justify to some extend for those servers and overflows that have enough people.
To me just make it that you get a chest after each knight is downed whether you killed it or not. One knight down, get a chance at a chest, second night get another chest and etc. This will help encourage more group play hopefully and make more people do the events since the rewards are inline with what effort is put in.
Get more people to do the events should be the key, since more people that want to do them will make it more fun for everyone else as well.

FANY.6524:

I did like that we could skip all of that, but I also really liked the battle against the Knights and the Holos. I thought it was major fun (though, I know others don’t agree). Now, we may not be able to get to the Holos.

Oh, I liked the fights. A lot, actually. Pre-patch, that is. But for many things I get the feeling that Anet/the devs think of stuff that sounds really cool on paper, maybe even test it on a closed server with people playing the game properly geared / communicating, which in no way represents a real server for many reasons I don’t feel like listing now. So you have good to great ideas with questionable to awful execution because Anet constantly ignores the basic rules that always apply:
- people (as in the majority, not all) do stuff for loot
- people want that loot the fastest and easiest way possible / people will abuse the system to achieve that
- people don’t care about story, presentation, mechanics, etc. if not for some loot at the end
- people are often incapable of I) understanding basic game mechanics II) adapting III) communicating (language barriers aside – yes that IS still a problem on EU overflows!)

To sum things up:
People might do the event for the thrill and the experience the first time around, then do it again to get their AP (which are now directly tied to actual rewards to promote powerplay / grinding of those / OCD) and once that is done all that is left is the loot. If the loot is not enough to justify the effort / time spent / failure rate, people will abandon it.
This in turn means that in order to get your LS done you need to play it on Day 1 or 2 of release, because that’s where everyone is rushing to do the events, since after that there will be too few people (add that with the flocking mentality of ‘wow, my server sucks, better guest on [successful server]’ → home server fails → more people go guest instead).

Again, I liked the Knight and Scarlet fights. I found them interesting, challenging, intense and thrilling. I like the small detail that you got acoustic feedback to the attunements. But now I’ve done them, I’ve experienced them, I have proven myself that I can beat them (which is not really hard but made hard because your success relies on others that may be incapable – but it’s an MMO after all).

Now, what’s left? Doing them again to help a friend / guildie (which includes possible failure due to aforementioned conditions) or for loot. The loot I find unworthy of the time spent (and I despise ‘trains’, I rather do open world content), I saw what’s to see. So I won’t bother with the Scarlet fight anymore.

My point is, the ‘do it for the fun!’ argument only really works when the content is new – at least for me. Once you’ve done it, the loot is what keeps you playing (in any MMO and long term anyway, see rare skins / cosmetics). And the loot isn’t worth it, as has been the case for a long while if not forever. Which makes me wonder why the trains aren’t nerfed, because if Anet wants to break zerg mentality and get people to be better players that don’t just stubbornly follow a tag ignoring what they’re hitting or doing, then why allow a majority of them to run in circles all day doing exactly that with the added benefit of being more rewarding – loot-wise – than most other stuff in the game?

/rant

Decided to check in on FA and see how well they were doing. All days prior to the patch, if I were to come in at this time, I would be in an overflow. This time, I wasn’t. They beat it, not sure how much time was left, but they wouldn’t have gotten the achievement. It’s pretty clear though that the people participating had diminished considerably.

The grand finale of the living story, the great climax to end the first phase, that’s what this living story is suppose to be. I would have hoped it would have better participation.

At the risk of getting infracted, Anet have brought this on themselves. The lack of a public test server to iron out the bugs that only a live world can exploit and that a private in-house simulation can’t even fathom, is what’s desperately needed. This would save a whole heap of grief on Anet’s part, and probably a lot of costs all-totalled.

Agreed, this should have been the jewel in the crown of the Living World Season 1, but the core (pardon the pun) of this disaster is the achievement that is arguably hardest to get. They offer ascended loot and put it on the table, only for it to be out of reach for many, then for all, and now for even fewer than the first day. Even some of the achievements are out of reach.

I and many others here could point out ways in which the whole event schedule could have gone way better and saved a whole heap of grief… but ultimately it’s Anet who has to be the one to take heed. Until then not a whole lot is going to change.

Valandil Dragonhart.2371:

At the risk of getting infracted

Don’t get into trouble on my account. If that’s where that train of thought leads, then I’ll see if I can word it better.

FANY.6524:

I know the zerg method isn’t everyone’s ideal when it comes to fighting the knights, but I feel this is ignoring the whole “play how you want” thing.

“Play how you want” was marketing speech. It was not a well formulated development goal. Without further clarification we’re just speculating on its meaning. For me, it meant that there would be several game play types that they would develop as their resources allowed, not that every thing they developed would somehow include every game play type, whatever a game play type might be. For some a game play type could be a demarcation between PvE, WvW, and PvE. For others it could be a finer demarcation, such as Open World Zerg PvE, Open World Organized PvE, PvE Dungeons, FotM, WvW – Normal, WvW – EotM, and sPvP. For some twisted individuals it could mean sitting around killing critters should be a path to billions of gold. See why this isn’t a useful phrase to use in defense of the content not delivering on your particular likes?

SirMoogie.9263:

“Play how you want” was marketing speech. It was not a well formulated development goal.

While true, they have listed “build diversity” as a design goal. I’m pretty sure they done this repeatedly. The current LS design, including the new Knight patch, appears to be counterproductive to that goal.

Fenrina.2954:

While true, they have listed “build diversity” as a design goal. I’m pretty sure they done this repeatedly. The current LS design, including the new Knight patch, appears to be counterproductive to that goal.

That is a legitimate and specific claim we can discuss, thanks for raising it. I’m afraid I don’t know a lot about the Knights to know what builds it prevents. This is what I know:

- The knights have two AOE attacks that can both be dodged. One pulls you in the other just does damage, but does not hit adjacent to the knight itself.
- The knights have a melee attack spin attack (minimal damage to me in soldiers/clerics).
- The knights have a stronger melee combo with some knockdown lots of damage to me even in soldiers/clerics)
- The knights take more damage when you have a buff of their respective color on, but you take more damage from them.
- The knight apply a shield that reflects conditions when up, but I’m not sure what causes them to do this or how long it lasts. Is it random with cooldown, at a certian threshold, or some other factor I haven’t considered? Can it be removed through actions by the players?
- The knights have numerical buff on them that isn’t defiance stacks. It is usually the color of their knight and goes up to 50. What does this do?
- All knights must be defeated and their buffs collected to fight Scarlet

I can see that condition builds can feel worthless, but without knowing more about the shielding I’m not sure how bad it is. Thoughts?

I always get onto overflows and most people race to red because it’s close to the waypoint. Once 50 is maxed there you get a few people on the blue and even fewer on the green. It means that there is little chance of the event succeeding overall so some people just seem to leave.

I’ve tried the event four times already and haven’t seen it succeed once yet. The best we’ve done is 2/3. Players are lucky if they get a knight down because at least they get the reward whether the whole event is a success or not.

SirMoogie.9263:

- The knight apply a shield that reflects conditions when up, but I’m not sure what causes them to do this or how long it lasts. Is it random with cooldown, at a certian threshold, or some other factor I haven’t considered? Can it be removed through actions by the players?

As of right now, this is the main contributor to the problem. To answer your questions, it is at thresholds, per 25% hp is my understanding, and can not be removed, period. In addition, reflect allows for a player to get hit by other people’s conditions. So an ele only doing vulnerable via vapor blade (water dagger 1) can get hit with bleed, burn, torment, confusion, etc.

There is no counter move a condition user can do short of changing their build (typically gear, but not limited to that), and the only “gain” is they are useful against the blue holo fight which is less than 1/3rd of the scarlet fight and requires the knights to be defeated first.

This patch specifically only makes things worse via the domino effect. Less people interested in fighting the knights does not help with the knight’s defeat, and previous LS have been rendered dead from loosing interest. As I said, that’s required for the blue holo fight.

Edit: I should add that the condition=lower defense mechanic does not really help the situation, but doesn’t hurt it. This is mainly because of the condition limits already ingame.

Basically this change has ruined the fun I was having. People were actually getting together and having fun. Enjoying that they could participate and succeed in taking out the Knights and the Holos. Now, LA is almost empty at times when there were at least 60 people the time before the patch. Thanks ANeT.

It’s become like the Scarlet invasion of zones. You changed it from a chance to get decent loot, to needing a massive zerg in the entire zone to actually succeed. People on my server just stopped going and the jokes in Teamspeak about how we had all better stop Scarlet from taking Lornars Pass again(which we didn’t bother with).

Anyway, thanks for at least a few days of enjoyment of this Living Story arc. Maybe we can actually take out some of the other world bosses now that most people are discouraged from doing the final battle for LA.

Majuub.6215:

6min kill should be interesting now…

If by “interesting” you mean impossible, then yes. :P

…All I can really say is I’m glad I already killed the World Boss that follows the Knights.

Because it seems like if you missed doing it before this patch, your chances of seeing it have gone out the window.

I managed to get into Scarlet a few times prior to the patch as well as 2 times today. It takes some coordination, but it is doable at least. The Achievement, I have no idea on as we have yet to get it that I know of.

Blade Syphon.4325:

…All I can really say is I’m glad I already killed the World Boss that follows the Knights.

Because it seems like if you missed doing it before this patch, your chances of seeing it have gone out the window.

Yeah, same old rule again, do everything in first two days. And I’m glad too that I did. Probably won’t see holo fight ever again.

Too bad for those who missed the start. :/

Ameepa.6793:

Blade Syphon.4325:

…All I can really say is I’m glad I already killed the World Boss that follows the Knights.

Because it seems like if you missed doing it before this patch, your chances of seeing it have gone out the window.

Yeah, same old rule again, do everything in first two days. And I’m glad too that I did. Probably won’t see holo fight ever again.

Too bad for those who missed the start. :/

I agree. I love the fact that they can go around changing the difficulty of achievements, making them lose their integrity drastically.

So low pop servers are excluded 75% of the time again?

This is getting old.

Ok, so if 50 go blue, 50 go red and 26 go to green and blue and red are killed but green isn’t killed, does this mean the ones at blue and red get chances for cores while the poor saps at green get stuck out with zero chance for anything?

I ask because I was one of the ones that spent 14 min at green with the other 25 folks and we at green came away empty handed, zero loot.

Inq.4256:

Ok, so if 50 go blue, 50 go red and 26 go to green and blue and red are killed but green isn’t killed, does this mean the ones at blue and red get chances for cores while the poor saps at green get stuck out with zero chance for anything?

I ask because I was one of the ones that spent 14 min at green with the other 25 folks and we at green came away empty handed, zero loot.

Correct, it means that. And it also means that no one will be doing the holo.

Inq.4256:

Ok, so if 50 go blue, 50 go red and 26 go to green and blue and red are killed but green isn’t killed, does this mean the ones at blue and red get chances for cores while the poor saps at green get stuck out with zero chance for anything?

I ask because I was one of the ones that spent 14 min at green with the other 25 folks and we at green came away empty handed, zero loot.

That’s exactly what it means. Same happened to me trying to be a team player when the patch first came out.

Inq.4256:

Ok, so if 50 go blue, 50 go red and 26 go to green and blue and red are killed but green isn’t killed, does this mean the ones at blue and red get chances for cores while the poor saps at green get stuck out with zero chance for anything?

I ask because I was one of the ones that spent 14 min at green with the other 25 folks and we at green came away empty handed, zero loot.

That seems to be the case. You get loot on a killed knight. When we do it the zone is constantly saying how many slots it has open at each Knight and how much life is left. It would have worked last time, but the players at blue did not catch the menders in time and he healed….

Miflett.3472:

Ameepa.6793:

Blade Syphon.4325:

…All I can really say is I’m glad I already killed the World Boss that follows the Knights.

Because it seems like if you missed doing it before this patch, your chances of seeing it have gone out the window.

Yeah, same old rule again, do everything in first two days. And I’m glad too that I did. Probably won’t see holo fight ever again.

Too bad for those who missed the start. :/

I agree. I love the fact that they can go around changing the difficulty of achievements, making them lose their integrity drastically.

This really is too bad. And quite upsetting too. I am one of those who were not fortunate enough to finish the living world event within the first few days. I am very disappointed about this. I am curious as to why ArenaNet is starting to make these events near impossible to accomplish.

The reality of this is that once people start to realize that the event is too hard to complete, less and less people are going to try which will eventually make the events impossible to accomplish due to a lack of people.

Moral of the story is that, even though none of us want an easy mission, we also don’t want one that is so hard it makes people quit trying to do them.

I am sure we have all heard this same thing in many other ways and multiple times, but I hope that maybe this will put things in an easy to understand way.

Agreed on your point as well, Zim. Time limited achievements are just set up for failure and frustration unless the development is 100% confident of their intended function.

Miflett.3472:

Inq.4256:

Ok, so if 50 go blue, 50 go red and 26 go to green and blue and red are killed but green isn’t killed, does this mean the ones at blue and red get chances for cores while the poor saps at green get stuck out with zero chance for anything?

I ask because I was one of the ones that spent 14 min at green with the other 25 folks and we at green came away empty handed, zero loot.

That’s exactly what it means. Same happened to me trying to be a team player when the patch first came out.

If I’m one of the leftovers from blue and red with no chance to kill green, then my incentive for playing is suddenly drastically reduced to ragequit stage.

Why can’t the devs reward the folks at the failed knight if they were participating in the event? Do we have to win the lucky first 100 lottery to be in on the successful knights in order to get a reward? This doesn’t seem to be balanced bug fix to me. What am I missing from the devs good logic here?

My problem is the chances of my server having 50 people at each knight is pretty slim.

Ive been out of town on business all week. I really want to see the boss fight without having to wait for hours to do so. If this keeps up, I will never get to see it.

This is very disheartening.

Blaeys.3102:

My problem is the chances of my server having 50 people at each knight is pretty slim.

The chance of any server having 50 ppl at each knight is practically nonexistent. The map hardcap is about 150 ppl, and there will always be at least few people afking or doing other things.

Thus the impetus behind organised groups getting overflow servers happening.

Diablo 3 was almost a failure and they fix it or trying

Final Fantasy 14 WAS a failure and they worked on another release

Guild Wars 2, with the last year release contents, was an announced failure and they still don’t get it. Bug Wars it’s the common reference to the game and it has no even any kind of guild wars like the old GW, it’s full of craps and grind that ruin the common ppl time and fun.

This game is funny but it has nothing to do with Guild Wars brand i bough when i make the pre-order of my collector.

-Once you ended with the 70-80% of pve achievement you have nothing else to do than farming. Farm the dungeon, farm the world bosses, farm mobs/champs, farm ores, farm the last few achievement point. It tooks hour of farming few gold or crafting material. Only ppl with no life can stand the time waste for what many used to call “Korean Farming”. It tooks month to have a chance to drop precursor o build up enough money to get better equip, once you get an exotic set or two. And when it seems an event was made for anyone they fix it in the middle of the fun. So back again to better farm for those who like it. (GW1 had enjoyable farm and not work-like one)

-Best defence is a good offence was the only way to play anything in the game. Zerk rules the game and ruin it. All the living i played was build up for a zerk lifestyle. No strategy at all, no thoughts for making good and various build like in GW 1, just AA and dodge when needed. The game encouraged the versatility but ppl play 2 or 3 kind of build, most of the time useless with the new contents release (just like nowadays).

-New contents are full of bugs or assumed ones.
And they fix it.
And they fix it again to the thing making harder for smaller team, angering the community.
And they fix it once again with a small useless reward hoping it bring back players… like it still easy enough for the whole community
And all this fixes sounds like some kind of politic arrangements, to make fun of ppl who hope for a better game.

-Storyline of personal story and dungeon is good enough to enjoy once, twice or more times. Storyline of living events it’s eclipsed by temporary farming (the only thing doable for an experienced player) and it’s not even good, like previous works. Living story is about overwheliming events in which ppl aren’t nothing more than cannon fodder. Anyone is nothin more than an unknown soldier that follow unavoidable and incomprehensible events. No one says why the “hero”, always put himself in a fight without doing anything than wait for the next “villain” move. No one says why the krytan ppl always remain passive and never try to counter the enemy moves until it’s too late (Scarlet threat the whole world but in lion’s arch they live an happy and easy life like they didn’t care, ‘till a sudden and unexpected annihilation)
Through the personal story, the player has an active role for build up an alliance of races to withstand Zaithan, an elder dragon, and they can’t even stand up against Scarlet menace. Logical and understandable… for a brainless “zerk”.

EDIT: i’m not used to english… i hope it’s comprehensible enough