Guild Wars 2

Worst design ever, most annoying, most unrewarding, simply aweful, if this is the new direction of this game…. well it’s a path, I guess. Spoon

Please explain why.

It has the 2 mechanics I despise. Timers and organisation.
I know the timer here is not that bad, but it still gives pressure. I’d much rather have another loss condition.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Please explain why.

Mechanics require organization but it has no tools to encourage organization.

Therefore, instead of a 10 minute run, it will take 45 minutes- 1 hour to complete.

The scaling is awful.

Trixie.7614:

It has the 2 mechanics I despise. Timers and organisation.
I know the timer here is not that bad, but it still gives pressure. I’d much rather have another loss condition.

Like what?

Organization is the basis for an MMO. If you don’t like it then single player games are more in line with what you like.

runeblade.7514:

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Please explain why.

Mechanics require organization but it has no tools to encourage organization.

Therefore, instead of a 10 minute run, it will take 45 minutes- 1 hour to complete.

Exactly, no tools for organization, and severe penalty for any random player coming onto the map and joining the fight. very very very punitive for participation. This is simply a bad conceptual event. Spoon

In favor:
It’s decent rewards if you do it properly.
It encourages (at least a small bit of) thinking and observation and the bosses actually have some mechanics that try to break up zergs.
It encourages organization on an (in theory) manageable level.

That’s what makes this good and it’s a nice direction to take.

In opposition:
You can’t force people to organize which means you get punished for what other people do or don’t do.
You need 6 people with commander tags costing 100 gold each to do it without needing to micromanage people and get them to team up and go away from eventual tags that may be up.
Even if you have 6 tags, it’s a large chance that people flock to one or two, creating major imbalances.
A big issue when it comes to this is that people have the ability to completely ignore everyone that doesn’t have their language settings the same as themselves so even if you try to micromanage, you might not even be heard.

These things really hinder the possibility for people to do the event.

Possible solutions
Make events give you more rewards depending on your personal contribution, within reasonable limits. This means the actual chests and stuff you get, not the bronze/silver/gold system that already exists because that’s not valuable enough for people to get rewarded for such a big event.

Require less groups.
Make it possible for commanders to hand out temporary subcommander tags to people in his/her party that are on the same map.
Have an NPC hand out temporary command tags.
Make it more worth it to have a commander tag on. If there are X people (10?) in your squad and in your map, you and them get a bonus magic find, gold gain, exp gain or something along those lines.

Have some form of entry condition that balances people, like for the scarlet knights in Lion’s Arch where you had buffs that only x people could take and unless you have it you don’t do damage and if you don’t do damage you don’t get rewarded.
Could make it increase dynamically when it’s balanced on a certain level. For example 10 per boss at first and when all bosses have 10, it increases to 15 per boss and then to 20 etc. Should also have easy to see counters all over the event area so that everyone can see what place lacks people.

Have a multiserver for each language. The reason why people join special language servers is because they want to speak that language when they play and that might also be the only language they know. Bunching them together with people that don’t know their language is counterproductive for everyone, especially so when they can set a setting in the game to ignore everyone not speaking their language.

This is just a continuous repeat of the past living story raid events, if that is what you want to call them. the devs want a complicated and to their benefit, interesting world zerg raid mechanic. However, they can’t seem to come up with designs that work for the majority of the players. Most of the players need to be spoon-fed the concepts, there is nothing wrong with that, most players are on for a few hours a week, they want to log in, get some kills, use their skills, and loot stuff so they can make incremental improvements in their toons. The devs in this game seem to think that everyone wants a super complicated, totally unexplained, and honestly, non-intuitive raid mechanic. At the very minimum, the health of all 6 bosses could have been displayed, giving the tiniest hint that there might be a reason why you might need to know it. Not unlike the Lions arch knight fight, another complete disaster of a global event. To be honest, I don’t see any learning from past mistakes here. It seems more like pile on to a bad thing than any learning process. And so the forums are full of complaints…. no surprises here. Spoon

Mikuchan.7261:

In favor:
~
In opposition:
~
Possible solutions
~

This is one of the more well thought out assessments of the Boss Blitz that I have read so far… Kudos!

And just to add my two cents…

It’s becoming painfully apparent to me that the average GW2 player doesn’t seem to put any effort into learning the events, and/or ever seem to try to get organized.

I myself will readily admit that when I started playing, I had no idea that the forums contained vital information that would be useful to an event, or boss… I just happened to get so fed up with how stupidly the Scarlet fight seemed to work, that I did some Google searches… and lo and behold, I found the GW2 Forums… where there is a torrent of frustrated posters.

So many posts on this forum about how most players mindlessly jump in and auto attack with everyone else… no coordination, no strategy, no paying attention to see which skills work well, and which are counter-productive… just zerg up and then complain how crap the reward is because there is no way to get it done in the time limit, or whatever…

well, what do you expect? apparently that’s how Anet taught them to play.

And even IF Anet is making some changes now in hopes to get them to learn a new way… they sure aren’t going about it very smart.

I mean, there is not even a gentle prodding, to try to point you to the forums where you could learn how the event should work best… No in-game tools to facilitate coordination, not enough information displayed to know what’s going on… and yeah… the megaserver and native languages… ugh..

Some people never learn unless you bash them upside the head with the right way to do it… but forget bashing… no one is even handing them a flyer.

Our guild farms gold and you get so much loot its ridiculous and a lot of fun.

gold event reward as in not silver or bronze etc.

Anet is working against the normal behavior of humans. In general humans are “herd” animals – they want to go where the most other humans are because that is the safest. In games if there are large numbers that means killing mobs easier/faster. Therefore zerg.

Recently Anet has introduced a counter-intuitive mechanic: more people does not = easier/faster killing. Sure, very experienced players will pick up on this quickly and easily. But in this case most players are at the FESTIVAL to have quick and easy fun, not to work hard like they are doing a dungeon or fractal. I go to the neighborhood street festival to have lighthearted fun. I can’t think of a single type of festival in the world where people have to do a lot of planning/strategy.

Leave the heavy strategy for the Living World, not for Festivals.

the other thing is we can’t ‘form’ raids like WoW, only 5-man parties, so why aren’t there more 5-man content

Zanthrax.6538:

Our guild farms gold and you get so much loot its ridiculous and a lot of fun.

If you are lucky to be enlisted in a large guild and able to gather together in the same instance (thanks, megaserver), you don’t have to brag about that.
Today, during weekend time, I have seen only empty servers.

Its a terrible event, made more terrible by being the carcass of a once enjoyable event.

I just tried this event again just to see if my initial thoughts were fair.

The event was sitting on bronze but 4 of the 6 bosses were dead. I decided to try for the ogre, and we beat him, and got the karma and gold medal for him. However I didn’t get a chest for the event when it ended. So on top of the drops being non-existent I just wasted 20 minutes for no completion chest.

Long story short, why should I spend 20 minutes getting nothing, when I can do that logged out.

sigh

Why are people complaining about organization issues? Ask around in Divinity/LA, use the LFG tool, etc.

I’ve had ZERO issues starting or finding a group to run it with.

If you want good rewards, then you have to work for it. No more Queensdale afk #1 all day spam anymore(which is good).

Seriously, just go put “LF taxi Blitz” into the LFG tool and I guarantee you’ll find a group willing to taxi you within a few minutes. Or if you’re a commander: put up “LF more commanders for Blitz”.

It’s like Marionette: the first couple days EVERYONE complained about it being too hard, but then it was on farm mode.

As for being “un-fun”: if a repeatable ~10 minute(including donation/setup times) farm isn’t fun to you, then I dunno what is. I’ve been getting ~2g per event, which means I’m near ~10g+ per hour(not to mention skillpoints on top of that/tokens/tickets, which can be turned in for even more g/hr).

tl;dr: Quit kittening and put in some “effort”.

PS: none of the gold runs I’ve been a part of/started were associated with large guilds(ie: TTS). They were all server specific guilds/pugged. Learn to communicate.

runeblade.7514:

Mechanics require organization but it has no tools to encourage organization.

Therefore, instead of a 10 minute run, it will take 45 minutes- 1 hour to complete.

This is indeed the biggest problem.
Also, I think the general idea is wrong. I think it should always end after ~7-8 minutes, and reward according to the number of bosses killed. Zergs would only get 1 or maybe 2, organized teams get 5 or usually all 6.

Scaling and no loot make this worst event ever made…

I quite enjoy this, when it’s done right…but keeping pugs from zerging to the next boss aint easy.
Especially as most dont care/refuse to listen/think you should go away because they want to do it wrong..

It must be super unfun. Whenever I go there, it’s empty

Judging from what others have said, mass organization with a group of randoms with no real tools for organizing doesn’t work. With the mega server in place and it being empty, I think it’s a sign that it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

Perhaps their efforts were better spent upgrading WvW.

somsom.5201:

sigh
…
If you want good rewards, then you have to work for it. No more Queensdale afk #1 all day spam anymore(which is good).
….

What are you doing in this thread ? As you can see from all the replies reason and logic have no place here, this is a thread dedicated to whining.

Tspatula.9086:

…At the very minimum, the health of all 6 bosses could have been displayed, giving the tiniest hint that there might be a reason why you might need to know it…

This simple display would probably make the greatest difference. Not only would it be a clue as to what should be happening (with the tooltip to bring down all the bosses within x time), it would allow players dropping in or moving between bosses to know where to go. If one is dropping like a rock, go to another.

The various world and guild missions that have multiple aspects to them have this function, it’s in the game system. It would be something they should be able to do fairly quickly to save this festival event.

There are two big UI tools that need to be added to make the Crown Pavillion more bearable, even though the refusal of people to learn individual bosses (Even through Trial+Error) makes me lose faith in humanity.

1. Boss health meter on ALL bosses (And Healing Turret for Boom Boom), that anyone in the arena can see at all times.
2. An NPC info-kiosk who gives general overviews and broad strategies for handling each of the bosses. The trial-and-error should come from applying the information given, not gathering it.

The big one, though, is:
3. A listing of the number of players on each boss. It’s impossible for players to self-organize and distribute themselves when there’s no source of information telling them where to go. Between terrible visibility from the overview platforms, cluttered arenas, and short draw distances, by the time people figure out whether the boss they’re headed too needs help or not they’ve already contributed to the scaling and can’t back out until it’s dead. Giving a board showing how many are on each allows people to communicate and organize more readily, while allowing new-to-the-area players to hop into where they’re needed.

huge +1 for this thread

it was really cool during the last year, the best event with the dragon festival, but this year, sorry, this is a big joke, this is awful, and the worst content ever released …

if that’s the futur path of the game … without me, i had a huge hope for this event

at least, they didn’t destroy the bazaar

I put this in another thread and I guess I will put it here too.

I got lucky and went to pavilion right after the patch that increased rewards. TTS was there farming it, got 2 golds while they were there. They left to do Teq and the rest of us invited guild members and we got 6 tags with 10 people on each. We farmed for close to maybe 6 hours, got 23 gold and 3 silver, and the silver was just for Pyroxis getting his health back due to a glitch. That equals out to close to 250 champ bags and I got like 5 stacks of tokens and 2 stacks of gauntlet tickets.

It does not take that much to get organized if people are smart enough to look at map chat.

somsom.5201:

If you want good rewards, then you have to work for it. No more Queensdale afk #1 all day spam anymore(which is good).

Seriously, just go put “LF taxi Blitz” into the LFG tool and I guarantee you’ll find a group willing to taxi you within a few minutes. Or if you’re a commander: put up “LF more commanders for Blitz”.

so just because you put LF taxi Blitz in lfg, that makes it better than 1 spam?

if that’s the way it suppose to be, just let us create instance raid. and stop with this open world non sense, since it’s turning into an instance raid anyway, with very lacking organize tool to keep people organized.

somsom.5201:

sigh

Why are people complaining about organization issues? Ask around in Divinity/LA, use the LFG tool, etc.

Seriously, just go put “LF taxi Blitz” into the LFG tool and I guarantee you’ll find a group willing to taxi you within a few minutes. Or if you’re a commander: put up “LF more commanders for Blitz”.

Thanks for this tip. I never use the lfg for “openworld” content. So I’d have never thought of using it for this. Put up a post and got and immediate link to an organised pav

Now having done it once on gold level on a server that did make an effort to organize, I’ll have to say that it can be fun and can work well. The problem is really just the dreadful scaling for a failed blitz if players are unable/unwilling to organize. It really is very little fun once the scaling punishes the players.

previous things in the living story that i did really like were the 5 man dungeon in the frost/flame arc and the marionette fight

both of these were challenging AS WELL as fun and they both gave decent rewards for the difficulty level

the marionette also required organisation which was tough to figure out at first, but then we learned

imho, making fights that are fun, challenging and worthwhile are key to a release that people enjoy

the zephyrite minigames (crystal collection and dolyak race) are fun to do and yield rewards that are worth it (not too much, not too little)

anet, i know you can make amazing content because we’ve seen it before – i just think we’d like to see a lot more of it

Just prevent people from going into the sector when there’s 10 people there already.
You can’t rely on other people NOT to do something. “Don’t go here!” “Don’t approach the boss” etc. “But you’re killing the boss and I want to help/ bored/ have nothing else to do”. “Noooooo! Don’t upscale her!!!!”
:P

When you get into an organized instance, loot flows freely.

But chances are when you log in, your instance will already be 1/2 hour into the event with 3 bosses down and at least 1/2 hour more before the nightmare ends. Only then do you get the opportunity to organize.

You can randomly guest to other servers and pray you’ll get into a good one.

You can stare at the LFGs, hoping you’ll see “Organized Crown Pavilion.”

Not good.

Lord Kuru.3685:

When you get into an organized instance, loot flows freely.

But chances are when you log in, your instance will already be 1/2 hour into the event with 3 bosses down and at least 1/2 hour more before the nightmare ends. Only then do you get the opportunity to organize.

You can randomly guest to other servers and pray you’ll get into a good one.

You can stare at the LFGs, hoping you’ll see “Organized Crown Pavilion.”

Not good.

No need to stare.
post an lfg “lf organised pav, please”.

It’s been almost instant for me getting into an organised one.

Tequatl update, great jungle wurm, marionnette, tuning down queensdale and FGS champ train, the scarlet knights stuff, to me it seems obvious arenanet is moving away from the huge zergs. If you split groups the event is very easy and plenty overflows are doing the event with almost guarenteed gold rewards, not hard at all.

DutchRiders.2871:

Tequatl update, great jungle wurm, marionnette, tuning down queensdale and FGS champ train, the scarlet knights stuff, to me it seems obvious arenanet is moving away from the huge zergs. If you split groups the event is very easy and plenty overflows are doing the event with almost guarenteed gold rewards, not hard at all.

I was lucky the other day and ended in an overflow with a guild doing the event. They were pretty awesome, all coordinated and we got lots of gold and some silvers.
But… even like that wasn’t the most fun of the contents.
Let’s not talk about the unorganized times.

Feels like content more suited for an instance or something…

Tspatula.9086:

runeblade.7514:

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Please explain why.

Mechanics require organization but it has no tools to encourage organization.

Therefore, instead of a 10 minute run, it will take 45 minutes- 1 hour to complete.

Exactly, no tools for organization, and severe penalty for any random player coming onto the map and joining the fight. very very very punitive for participation. This is simply a bad conceptual event. Spoon

Does a guild counts as a tool for organization?

Maliel.8362:

Tspatula.9086:

runeblade.7514:

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Please explain why.

Mechanics require organization but it has no tools to encourage organization.

Therefore, instead of a 10 minute run, it will take 45 minutes- 1 hour to complete.

Exactly, no tools for organization, and severe penalty for any random player coming onto the map and joining the fight. very very very punitive for participation. This is simply a bad conceptual event. Spoon

Does a guild counts as a tool for organization?

Not quite, since it doesn’t provide information about what’s going on where across the area. At best, it’s a place with a few of the people knowing what to do and communicating with each other. And, they aren’t “Pick up and Play”.

There’s map chat for a resin. This morning I did 2 gold and one silver run. The silver was I between the 2 golds dew to a snaffo with the ogre boss. It’s not impossible. You must just be unlucky. And for the record this was on the EU servers.

My explanation of why the Queens Pav, fails for me.

I go in, try to join in.. “Go away we have enough you’ll make it scale.. Go stand with the rest in the middle..”. I’m not a wallflower, I came to do my part, according to them my part is to sit in the middle and don’t bother them. Too many or not enough was the rule of the afternoon it seems. After over an hour of the bosses resetting because it took so long I left, as did most of the others. I really enjoy the Festival, but the QP, well it could be removed today and I wouldn’t care. I understand that isn’t very fair minded. I guess after all the anger, and hate talk and complaining in the QP it left me in less than a charitable mood. I don’t know what constitutes a failure in Anets mind but in mine, the QP is. IT brings out the worst in people. Why was it made so difficult? This is an MMO, but they only want groups of 10 to 15 on each boss? They add mega servers then make content that requires small groups. Doesn’t make sense. Even the pros I see in chat in the keep etc.. said they were leaving game. They said they have given the game too many chances. They could have made it competitive but not impossible. The Aspect festival is so happy and inviting, the QP.. is horrible.

I definitely think it’s better suited as a guild mission or something. I’ve had decent luck with getting into organized groups, but even so, it’s barely fun. I only joined in for the achievements, and now that I’ve gotten what I wanted, I don’t know if I’ll be going back.

But that’s really just the nature of the Living Story. You do achievements, get a reward for the meta-achievement, and pray to your favorite deity that Anet doesn’t take too long on the next release.

Djinn.9245:

Anet is working against the normal behavior of humans. In general humans are “herd” animals – they want to go where the most other humans are because that is the safest. In games if there are large numbers that means killing mobs easier/faster. Therefore zerg.

Recently Anet has introduced a counter-intuitive mechanic: more people does not = easier/faster killing. Sure, very experienced players will pick up on this quickly and easily. But in this case most players are at the FESTIVAL to have quick and easy fun, not to work hard like they are doing a dungeon or fractal. I go to the neighborhood street festival to have lighthearted fun. I can’t think of a single type of festival in the world where people have to do a lot of planning/strategy.

Leave the heavy strategy for the Living World, not for Festivals.

Well theres this street football event thats held every year in my city. It requires a bit of organization and teamwork. Its a PvP event though so maybe that doesnt count.

I enjoyed this actually, yes its frustrating at first when people are not listening and not even trying.

We tried to start organizing some random Boss Blitz server and its quite fun organizing it, we did it without any tag and we eventually getting some gold and silver just using chat and talking to people on map chat “politely”. Then I guess that server became known to have gold rewards and eventually more commanders come and sustained the organized run. Such rewarding feeling when you accomplished it.

Getting random people to cooperate can get extremely frustrating. Just do the Taidha Covington event and that becomes readily apparent. It’s ridiculous how long people need to spam “STOP ATTACKING!” before the randoms stop hitting her and the event completes. That’s a very basic form of organisation that people can’t seem to grasp.

Now that I’ve finished the Boss Blitz achievement I doubt I’ll be participating in any more of those events, unless I happen upon them drawing to a close when visiting the Queen’s Gauntlet.

the key is to ask them politely, yes there will be people still wont listen but you can limit those.

for those others not stop attacking we always stop at 10% HP so a single person hitting it will most likely to die before killing the boss solo.

I thought the community had been pretty clear for the best part of the last year that most where sick of zerg based Living Story events? If their solution is a zerg event that requires six zergs, then things would seem to be very broken in the design process.

Not a good sign for those hoping that ANet might get it’s mojo back with season two…

Fiontar.4695:

I thought the community had been pretty clear for the best part of the last year that most where sick of zerg based Living Story events? If their solution is a zerg event that requires six zergs, then things would seem to be very broken in the design process.

Not a good sign for those hoping that ANet might get it’s mojo back with season two…

“Community” hasnt really been clear about this, where do you get this community. Part of community wants something a bit organisational, 2nd part dont and 3rd part dont care either way.

So community…no. As long as they provide both types , and neaither sucks (as pavillion in one version currently is probably worst content to date) spawning “GTFO” and “hate the player” mentality. Last thing GW2 needs is rise of elitism. It has been scourge of MMOs since EQ.

Its simply very bad design.

I’ve just experienced the worst part of the Crown Pavillion – Dead instances: The map is stuck on bronze, 5 or 6 bosses still remaining, and all of them scaled up to handle the zerg that was there who knows how long ago, with only a few survivors sticking around trying to figure out what to do about the mess.

Sartharina.3542:

I’ve just experienced the worst part of the Crown Pavillion – Dead instances: The map is stuck on bronze, 5 or 6 bosses still remaining, and all of them scaled up to handle the zerg that was there who knows how long ago, with only a few survivors sticking around trying to figure out what to do about the mess.

At this point you will have to find an organized group that farms the place to find an active overflow; I hear the LFG tool actually helps here. I have occasionally gotten a bronze while there by helping to take out a boss then going back to my liandri ticket sink. But it depends on the amount of players there and bosses left so I usually don’t bother.

What’s an overflow?