Guild Wars 2

Succeeding in getting loot is completely based off of being better than the other guys(who in turn get no or less loot.)

It makes events extremely fun while you are doing them but I realize that no community at all is being built on my server.

Its an unusual experience. The PVE is actually more like EVE in spirit than it is like normal MMOs.

I’ve noticed this as well although I find nothing fun about it at all. Playing as a mesmer tagging mobs is a nightmare once the group get too large, especially in the events where mobs are invincible until they run into the instant death AoE zone everyone is waiting for them at.

Now when someone is downed in a fight I question why I should help them since I’ll be giving up my already limited chance at gaining any loot to get them up. If too many people show up now to a event I usually just leave and find something else to do.

Don’t see a problem myself I help where I can even if that means reviving people or blasting centaurs into the stone age.

Some you all seem to forget is that these DE’s happen all the time so if you didn’t get a shot in last time wait for the next one. Sure it doesn’t build a community but niether did GW1 since your in a town and then you leave 2 minutes after.

The only communities you do build are in Guilds or people you keep on your friends lists.

It is quite exciting up to a point, that being, when you realize that the requirements for gold are quite easy. So just drop that AOE skills 2 or 3 times.

In the beta, people repeatedly asked for more levels of reward for people who did best or so. Like, getting platinum for being in the top 5 contribution to the event out of the 50 people who participated.

Why should someone who just walked by and used his AOE attack get silver, when i spent 25 minutes doing that particular even and got a reward just slightly better than his?

On the other hand, i remember reading Anet’s stance on this, and they mentioned that they have no intention of changing this around.

I am on Desolation and have noticed almost zero community. Was even in a guild with 40+ members and never saw anyone typing in /guild, asking LFG.

The only conversations I have had have been “thx 4 rez”… “np”. A strange, silent game.

Still, it beats APB: Reloaded’s “NOOB HACKER U BAN” continuously…

Not to be over cynical, but communities form in MMOs mostly when people need other people in order to complete content that has high chance of yielding useful loot (how many people met their MMO buddies whilst doing the hogger in Elwynn Forest?). It’s also somewhat ironic that technical & design improvements that have reduced the necessity for queuing have also resulted in people getting together less, since there is less downtime in which to communicate.

GuzziHero.2467:

I am on Desolation and have noticed almost zero community. Was even in a guild with 40+ members and never saw anyone typing in /guild, asking LFG.

The only conversations I have had have been “thx 4 rez”… “np”. A strange, silent game.

Still, it beats APB: Reloaded’s “NOOB HACKER U BAN” continuously…

Then you’re in a bad guild.

The one I’m in on Desolation has people in it and chatting even now (early afternoon on a weekday when most people are likely at work / school / college / whatever).

I like the idea personally. It rewards folks for doing an entire event. I do think though, its far too easy to get a gold medal and it should be very difficult to get one, but also increase the reward for it.

Just my two cents.

PP

The reward system is sorta borked. You should get rewarded for your contribution, not for how your contribution stacked up against other players. There should be no maximum number of medals. I am fine with gold/silver/bronze being competitive but you should never not even get a medal because there were too many players doing the event.

Some of you seem confused about the subject of this post.

Its not about gold medals – its about items and gold from drops.

In most events its easy to get a gold medal if you try and its ussuallly not at anyone expense.

Loot on the other hand is far more valuable to most people. And you can easily have a 10x diffenernce in profits based on how you compare to other event runners.

I’ve noticed this also. Before the game was released they advertised the game as everyone getting the same loot at the end of an event. That obviously was not true.

Some events, like the stupid Fire Elemental event, you will die many many times, and still get no chest of loot.

I play Mesmer. In those Zerg Events I get Bronze at best. Usually nothing. It’s AOE or die. Most of the times I can’t even spawn an Illusion before the Mob is dead. Orr is terrible for me, because once an event shows up, the Zerg comes. If I’m lucky I get a few kills before the AOE-Fest starts. I thought I would be nice not to compete with other players in a MMO, but that’s just wrong. The competition works just different.

The problem is that there are little to no meta events right now and the few that are in the game cycle between which are working and which are broken during each patch, so people are often stuck in a chain on which few dynamic events do work.

Once there are more meta events and people cannot do each of them and they sit on their hands for a few hours until they reset to redo the cycle. But instead have to choose which ones they can do because there are several happening at once, a stronger community will be built. But until then they only community right now is very small and often around the instances for people who do them all day every day, or in guilds.

The system works till a certain cap, where the minimum amount needed for contribution becomes harder to reach with others taking it before you. Normally this is suppose to scale to a level where it’d work, but when the requirement per mob is still a fixed value it doesn’t work with mass AoE without damage caps.

As a condition damage Ranger (that primarily deals damage over time, single target via shortbow and AoE with traps), I find it incredibly difficult if not impossible to get any amount of action from events that have more than ten people at them. Warriors and Eles just run into the fray, dealing their minimum required damage within the first second and then the mob is down. Any class that lacks that kind of burst is at a disadvantage, and I don’t really see any way that can be changed without raising the mob health and lowering requirements…which would only make sense if you lowered the drop rate.

Making it a competition to get in the minimum damage is unfair to half the professions in the game. After putting in over two hundred hours in a character, it shouldn’t matter what profession you picked; farming should be accessible to all. Now I feel like I made the wrong profession choice (because, let’s face it…power isn’t going to get you anywhere on a Ranger as far as event farming goes.).

There’s competition yes, but there’s way more teamwork in this game compared to others between random strangers. There isn’t mob-tagging like in most MMO’s, so everyone gets some exp for helping. You even get a decent amount of exp resing random people. Dynamic events for the most part encourage teamwork among strangers, unless your in a really over-saturated event.

The competition in this game among random people in PvE is tiny really. I played ff11 for 6 years, and most of the endgame HNM’s that your linkshell would farm would be world spawns every 21-24 or 48-72 hours. Your group would have to camp the spots regularly against literally hundreds of others and try to be the first to tag the mob.

Most people that are posting in this topic seem to follow into one of the following categories:

1) Knows about the loot competition in this game.
2) Has not gotten to level 80 and farmed in Curse Shore
3) Is level 80 has been to CS, but doesn’t realize the competition

Loot in this game is based off of how much damage you do to an enemy. If the game feels that you did not do enough damage, then the enemies will not drop any loot for you. You have to do enough damage to enemies in order to get a “tag” on them. This is why high dps AoE skills are king in this game.

This system quickly becomes a problem in Cursed Shore, because the amount of players/botters doing the events. Some events easily exceed 20+ people and so this causes the massive problem of no one being able to do enough damage and no one getting loot at all since the mobs die to quickly.

Overall this method creates a negative community rather than a positive one. Personally, I have myself getting annoyed when people call out events (that are not temple or Arah events) in CS, and then 50 people show up and the amount of loot I get decreases considerably. I see people telling the people that call out events on map chat to be quiet and it is just creating a bad community.

^ This.

Dealing with botting only solves part of the problem.
What if certain events could give items as well as experience/gold/karma? This way everyone that participates would have drop potential. Used for highly-trafficked events such as Shelter in Cursed Shore, it could cut down on the monopoly that bots and heavy nukers have on loot.

GuzziHero.2467:

I am on Desolation and have noticed almost zero community. Was even in a guild with 40+ members and never saw anyone typing in /guild, asking LFG.

The only conversations I have had have been “thx 4 rez”… “np”. A strange, silent game.

Still, it beats APB: Reloaded’s “NOOB HACKER U BAN” continuously…

Well I ended up fighting a champion Giant and ended up talking to 2 other players for a good 20 minutes it was fun.

Events are the best time to see the community work together sure they don’t talk but they res you when they get the chance and you can form a party afterwards.

Tim.9850:

I’ve noticed this also. Before the game was released they advertised the game as everyone getting the same loot at the end of an event. That obviously was not true.

Some events, like the stupid Fire Elemental event, you will die many many times, and still get no chest of loot.

Group events don’t give you loot just Karma, XP, Gold.

Also I remember them saying everybody gets loot if they contribute to the kill NOT everybody gets the same.

I could get a mace while my mate gets a vial of weak blood.

Why would everyone want the same loot?

We all use different weapons and classes of armour!

Yeah it’s the same kitten thing in WvW where burst is the only thing that matters. What a disappointment.

Even my Necro can barely do enough dmg. Staff being so horrible doesn’t help.

Paulus magintie.7432:

Some you all seem to forget is that these DE’s happen all the time so if you didn’t get a shot in last time wait for the next one.

Except for when you hit 80, and everyone farms the same areas and events for hours on end. They you are competing with the same, often large, groups of players over and over and over.

Low level events, not really an issue…. at 80 however… its a totally different story.

Too bad Anet didnt scale event rewards, and loot, in ALL zones to be somewhat equal for a level 80. Id love to be able to roam the world at 80, doing events, than be stuck in the same 2 zones.

I’m just waiting to see more ‘contribution measurement’ come from buffs, debuffs, rezzing and heals. I was hoping to level my Elementalist alt as a pure healer/support character and it works great unless I’m doing a DE. If I spend more time healing & buffing everyone than dps’ing I end up with a bronze. It seems as though “play your way” also means, “hit hard or get no credit.”

Even in a dungeon, if I’m not doing decent damage to everything around me, I don’t see much in the way of drops either. If we’re in an actual party group, and my party kills something while I kept them from dying, why shouldn’t I get loot too? How does supporting my allies equate to not actually participating? But if we don’t have someone playing a support role, the dungeon just takes longer due to wipes.

I’m sure there’s an argument for DE’s where people could just spam AoE heals & buffs that may be unnecessary and still get credit. But as long as those heals & buffs are applied to those doing all the damage, how is that not ensuring the success of the event group at large? Or what about damage-prevention debuffs like blind & slow? If my engineer throws his flash & freeze grenades and the wave of mobs is dead, I got no loot for keeping them from hitting anyone or holding them in everyone’s AoE. I’m left just spamming my 1 key to do enough damage to get credit while some poor dagger thief gets his face smashed in.

I was just in Orr last night and actually heard someone in local chat say, “It’s not every day you see warrior with a shield equipped in Orr. Did you just get here?” And it’s ultimately true. You see so few support weapons/builds being used in Orr its no wonder so many people get defeated during events. It’s even less of a shock that nobody revives them. I love the concept of playing world events with groups of strangers and friends, but it just seems people get less and less helpful as you get to level 80. And I can’t get upset with the player when the game doesn’t recognize helping other players as a form of participation when players who want to play support roles need gear just as much as the burst dps players. It’s ironic, really, for the players wanting to play a support role that they have to play burst dps builds to earn their support/healing/tanking gear.

The other night after the server reset was great. There were not bots in Cursed Shore and people realized how much loot they SHOULD be getting without having to compete with 30 bots at the popular DE spawns.

Removing the bots would be a step in the right direction.

Or just removing the “tagged mob” loot and providing chests with equivalent amount of loot.

Last night someone started spamming the map about how I was a bad person and no one should group with me – all because I kept running ahead to attack the waves of Risen at an event which spoiled her aoe plan.

I’ve always found Chaos Storm to be a nice AOE for Mesmers.

Ghoest.3945:

Succeeding in getting loot is completely based off of being better than the other guys(who in turn get no or less loot.)

It makes events extremely fun while you are doing them but I realize that no community at all is being built on my server.

Its an unusual experience. The PVE is actually more like EVE in spirit than it is like normal MMOs.

TBH, it only feels like a competition if that’s your goal. If all you want to do is get the most EXP you possibly can, then yes, you will be fighting over mobs with all the other people doing the same thing. Alternatively, you could try to be immersed, make decisions based on what you think your character would do; after all, he doesn’t know what EXP is.

There is just one problem that causes this what you are talking about… Too easy encounters, that die in an instant without being a threat at all! But that is a topic that is on the first side since launch (or even BWE), so hopefully that is something they gonna improve!

Chaos Storm isn’t a reliable way for Mesmers to tag in those DEs. Even if it helps tag, that’s pretty much it. They have to wait for it to cooldown. You’d have to keep Mind Wracking your illusions constantly too. And that’s also hard to keep up. I don’t even want to Time Warp to help everyone else since it means I will have almost zero chance to get loot.

I have a level 80 Ele in Orr too and the AOE skills to tag are very plentiful where I never feel an anxious rush to try to damage tag among others players.

In small battles with other people helping or solo in Orr, I prefer the Mesmer. I hate using my Ele to solo Orr, but it’s great in big groups where it’s just utter chaos and tagging AOE.

I’ve noticed this pretty much the first or second day when the game was released.

It’s extremely flawed and pretty much goes completely against Anet’s philosophy.

I remember doing my absolute best just mowing everything down with my AoE and getting ridiculous amounts of loot/xp. Rewards from DE completion itself is pretty much worthless in comparison besides the Karma.

There’s no point to rezzing players, there’s no chance to fail the DE anyway, and even if you did fail who cares, it’s all about tagging mobs for loot. I was killing things so fast with my aoe spam who knows how many people I denied loot from.

This also has to do with just how poorly designed most DE’s are as well. All they do is spawn waves of weak mobs for people to aoe down, nothing more. I honestly don’t know what they were thinking. Oo

Andred.1087:

Ghoest.3945:

Succeeding in getting loot is completely based off of being better than the other guys(who in turn get no or less loot.)

It makes events extremely fun while you are doing them but I realize that no community at all is being built on my server.

Its an unusual experience. The PVE is actually more like EVE in spirit than it is like normal MMOs.

TBH, it only feels like a competition if that’s your goal. If all you want to do is get the most EXP you possibly can, then yes, you will be fighting over mobs with all the other people doing the same thing. Alternatively, you could try to be immersed, make decisions based on what you think your character would do; after all, he doesn’t know what EXP is.

I’m sorry but that is ridiculous. You can cover your eyes all you want, but in the end this is about poor design (or poor execution) of game mechanics. And it completely encourages selfish play.

I really enjoy a lot of the DEs in the game, especially in CS. However, I feel that the scaling of DE shouldn’t solely be done by increasing the mob count. There need to be more Veteran monsters in these events.

I understand that not all Veteran mobs are created equal. Some take a good 3 minutes to be downed with focus fire, while others only need 30 seconds. I suggest that more of these “30 second lifespan under focus fire” Veterans be spawned in the more zergy DEs off high level zones. This would allow for all professions with varying builds to do enough damage to tag without prolonging the DE to a sluggish degree.

I think (but don’t know) that Veteran mobs are more likely to drop better rarity items, so this may be a reason why they don’t want to add too many in a DE. If that is an issue, then create a new tier of mob that has a similar loot table as the base mobs but a bit more survivability.

Any thoughts on this idea?

Orr mobs should scale much better so when there’s a large group of players in an event, powerful mobs will spawn with AoE attacks that can down a player in a few hits and enough health to survive longer than 2 seconds in player AoE.
Also have mobs spawn in from multiple sides, so people don’t just stack their group at the 1 side all the mobs spawn at.

Yup, in events, all i do is play the “tag all mobs before they die” game. It gets pretty hectic when everyone is playing the same “game” and it turns into a race.

Cursed Shore = Fastest AoE for Loot = No fast AoE, no Loot = Stealing Mob…
Where’s the difference?
In “High Population” servers i can’t take, sometimes, ONE SINGLE LOOT.

Agreed.. the mob tapping and DE system in this game needs work. I just spent 20 minutes actively participating in an event. doing moderate damage and peeling for a ranger specced heavily for damage on my mesmer.. what do i get for all of that.. bronze and a pittance for karma.

Agreed.. the mob tapping and DE system in this game needs work. I just spent 20 minutes actively participating in an event. doing moderate damage and peeling for a ranger specced heavily for damage on my mesmer.. what do i get for all of that.. bronze and a pittance for karma.WTH.

I was on my level 80 necromancer (with full exotic armor) yesterday in Orr. I participated from the beginning in fighting two champions. I brought out minions and used staff area effects constantly. I got gold rewards but no drop from either boss. These fights took at least 10 to 15 minutes each. I would have made way more money just soloing undead elsewhere. If this is typical, then there is no incentive what so ever to participate in boss fights.

Having to fight 60+ people in a mob in an attempt to obtain a kill and receive a loot drop is bad programming.It is the same as taging a mob in other games for the kill.
The only diff is that we get a group reward at the end of the event. Which after 3 attacks are gold and you move on.
I dont find this fun and fighting bots as well doesnt help.

The north DE in Pentient Path in Orr is absurd. When a veteran shows up, I.spam all my highest DPS abilities that I’ve been saving up. No matter, I get nothing.

Heck, most of the time at that DE, I can’t even see my character on the screen. The 300-400 karma isn’t worth it.

Jaga.2084:

I play Mesmer. In those Zerg Events I get Bronze at best. Usually nothing. It’s AOE or die. Most of the times I can’t even spawn an Illusion before the Mob is dead. Orr is terrible for me, because once an event shows up, the Zerg comes. If I’m lucky I get a few kills before the AOE-Fest starts. I thought I would be nice not to compete with other players in a MMO, but that’s just wrong. The competition works just different.

Then your playing bad. I run plinx, arena all the time. Its easy to get gold in most of them. Only time I get silver or bronze is after landing zone and I go run and help pull brood mother or do tars. Its only about a 40 point diff in karma for a silver easily made up by the fact I tagged tar and got gold.

You have to have a staff if your doing DE’s with alot of people. I dont like staff much but its pretty much a must for the chaos storm. Also Sword/whatever is good focus GS is good to. If your not shattering your clones in the pile of risen then your not going to get loot.

GS skill 2 immediate shatter after contact and you have aoe. Dodge roll into pile of mobs F1 or F2 aoe done.

Mesmer isnt a aoe class which should be obvious if you played to 80. Aoe is shatters, chaos storm and Warden bezerker also thats pretty much it.

Just run in tag mobs with 1 on 1h sword. Blurred if its up. Warden if its up, bezerker.

The only problem is loot drops but you can still do ok. Just not as good as thieves or warriors spinning attacks. Save chaos for next spawn of big mobs dont waste it on 1 target or a veteran whatever. Just hit it with a auto or something cause if its alot of people its going to die fast anyway.

The problem in Cursed Shore is that the mobs are dying too quickly. The events really need to scale up a lot more.

A long while back I posted a suggestion that the “wave after wave” approach to encounter design only works against killbots with a set maximum kill count. We need armies to appear on the horizon—enough at once that attacking them is either really fun or absolutely futile. They need to have siege weaponry to cover their advancing troops. Only after the first wave fails does a second, stronger wave advance… if the players can hold out long enough, the last wave requires the players (and relevant NPCs) to sally forth and strike down the commander and the siege weaponry.

Bots won’t be able to hold out against it, simple AE fests are less useful as those siege attacks can decimate stationary/clusters of players. Additionally, an advance over a broad avenue reduces the clustering of enemies.

I hear the centaur recently bolstered their bridge-repairing efforts with catapults. It takes time to get it right.

It is also worth noting that incidents like this are isolated to a few top farming spots. In the rest of the world, we have a wonderful harmony.

Maybe have every count of 5 mobs turn that into a vet spawn instead.

Most people ignore vets while killing mass amounts of mobs, they don’t have any decent drops for the added difficulty, so it’s pretty much just a mob that gets forced to the side, and dealt with in between waves. I am a warrior and I have no problem tagging most of the time and I usually find a group so we can “pool dps” but some of these areas get so over run with players that a group of 5 is just pissing in the wind. I have noticed that grouping with say more warriors the chances on drops are better than say group with a few mesmers. So there is definitely a problem that needs addressed, maybe they need reintroduce those little chests that drop, but instead of being a daily reward, be a “loot for that last event” reward when it finishes (still giving karma, xp, coin).

Hi all,
Does healing counts as contributing to the event ?
(I’m new to GW2)

As far as I can tell, healing does not count. Nor does buffing. All that counts is AoE damage.

“. Warriors and Eles just run into the fray, dealing their minimum required damage within the first second and then the mob is down. Any class that lacks that kind of burst is at a disadvantage, and I don’t really see any way that can be changed without raising the mob health and lowering requirements…which would only make sense if you lowered the drop rate.”

Don’t blame ele, they only have the most visible skills but on mine loot was abysmal even with meticulously calculating when to drop the lava field or switch to air for the bouncy lightning attack (usually after someone spreads out the mobs so I can still attack them all).

Quenchen.3641:

Hi all,
Does healing counts as contributing to the event ?
(I’m new to GW2)

What gear is the least valued? Healing power, that’s right. That’s all that needs to be said.

Level 1-79 I felt GW2 had the least competitive PvE of all time. Everyone helped each other, you were glad to see other people. At level 80, getting a tag is so hard that everyone groups up and fights to tag the mobs first.

Wouldn’t call it competition orientated, I would call it a bad design because unless you’re aoeing, you don’t get anything. Even if you single target a monster, you still don’t get anything.