Don't hate on the zerg

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Posted by: Ohoni.6057

Ohoni.6057

I tried the new crown pavilion, and after about forty minutes we got stalled on the 5th boss and I really had to quit. Some in map chat were saying that this was because we were meant to take all six on simultaniously, “splitting the party” as it were. The Lion’s Arch fight had a similar mechanic.

Stop this.

Don’t hate on the zerg. The zerg, whether you like it or not, is a core aspect of this game. Mechanics that you put in to split up zergs make the game LESS fun, not more fun. They make a fight that should take a few minutes and everyone cheers into a total slog. You do not currently have the tools in place to allow players to well coordinate multiple parties of appropriate sizes. If you enter a map, the question is “where is everyone? Ok, then that is where I want to be.”

Maybe in the future you can add in an element that projects on the map how many players are at each location, so that they can better distribute themselves to each, but those tools are not in the game right now, so stop designing content that is intended to “twart” the zerg. Embrace the zerg, it makes the game better for everyone.

“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”

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Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

IMHO, the only missing thing is every boss HP bar being monitored under the Boss-Blitz event timer.
This should be enough indicative of which boss needs reinforcements and allow a proper split on an unorganized megaserver.

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Posted by: wingofbenu.4316

wingofbenu.4316

Hardly. The problem with getting a proper split is simple. Even if you tell everyone “go to X boss”, theyll assume someone else will go, and therefore NOBODY goes.

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Posted by: Blackarps.1974

Blackarps.1974

Why not hate on the zerg? The way the Pavilion is this time around is to discourage zerging because the boss’s HP will scale just like that of a Champion. However, unlike a Champion, there is no cutoff point for the scaling and it just goes up, up, up. Even if the scaling is linear with the amount of HP added per player, 50 people at one boss are far less likely to use skills than that of only 10 people. It happens to champions all the time.

The biggest problem here isn’t zerging, its the fact that the rewards are pretty crummy and then you have to pay gold to get it going again. Everyone was expecting and hoping for a great farm today just like the last time the Pavilion was around. Its really upsetting that it was changed and these forums are a clear indicator of that right now.

Maguuma Guardian

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Posted by: chronometria.3708

chronometria.3708

I was surprised at the level to which this event has been degraded in its design.

1 – Doesn’t drop tier 5 and 6 mats (which we desperately need due to horrible pricing at the moment)

2 – Apparently expects group splitting, but lacks any means to assist players in doing that.

3 – Terrible rewards that in no way match the time and effort the event requires.

4 – Bosses that are uneven in difficulty and that usually punish melee.

5 – Having to pay to begin the event.

Needless to say, it could only really be worse if it, say, permanently killed our characters on death or something similarly disastrous. As it is, there is just no reason to do this and I`m already seeing people simply going elsewhere.

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Posted by: GlowSticks.9734

GlowSticks.9734

These events suck. Time to move on Back to other duties.

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Posted by: Larynx.2453

Larynx.2453

Autoattack AFK in a zerg is very dynamic and interesting gameplay…

When someone can literally tab out for 30-60 seconds at a time, not die, and do 90% optimal performance, you done messed up somewhere.

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Posted by: Larynx.2453

Larynx.2453

Also, you don’t pay to begin the event. Paying speeds up the interval, but the progress meter increases regardless of player input.

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Posted by: wingofbenu.4316

wingofbenu.4316

Autoattack AFK in a zerg is very dynamic and interesting gameplay…

When someone can literally tab out for 30-60 seconds at a time, not die, and do 90% optimal performance, you done messed up somewhere.

and when you need to somehow get 60+ people on a megaserver to follow orders to get it done right, despite a complete lack of tools to effectively communicate to all of them, for a small amount of rewards, you’re asking for failure.

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Posted by: Larynx.2453

Larynx.2453

Autoattack AFK in a zerg is very dynamic and interesting gameplay…

When someone can literally tab out for 30-60 seconds at a time, not die, and do 90% optimal performance, you done messed up somewhere.

and when you need to somehow get 60+ people on a megaserver to follow orders to get it done right, despite a complete lack of tools to effectively communicate to all of them, for a small amount of rewards, you’re asking for failure.

It’s almost like GW2 has terrible group content design at its core.

I don’t think I ever once said that the Boss Blitz was well done. Saying zerging is bad is not the equivalent.

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Posted by: Kiriwar.7382

Kiriwar.7382

coordinate players without blue tiaras? ha!

Like swords, sorcery and misfortune?
Read Wingless, a fantasy comic about a knight’s journey, here!

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Posted by: Ohoni.6057

Ohoni.6057

Autoattack AFK in a zerg is very dynamic and interesting gameplay…

When someone can literally tab out for 30-60 seconds at a time, not die, and do 90% optimal performance, you done messed up somewhere.

This has no relevance to the topic at hand. Nobody is asking for that, and you can do that anyways if you like with the current events.

“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”

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Posted by: Larynx.2453

Larynx.2453

Autoattack AFK in a zerg is very dynamic and interesting gameplay…

When someone can literally tab out for 30-60 seconds at a time, not die, and do 90% optimal performance, you done messed up somewhere.

This has no relevance to the topic at hand. Nobody is asking for that, and you can do that anyways if you like with the current events.

The title of the post is “Don’t hate on the zerg” and the entire content of the OP is about how you shouldn’t hate on the zerg.

The zerg, in GW2, is what I described. The “core” content of the game is spamming 1 semi-AFK, that is zerging in GW2. Zerging is inherently boring due to the nature of having that many players. In order for the content to be doable, the content needs to be trivial and require very little mechanical effort.

See 40+ man raiding in any MMO ever. Individual effort is basically showing up.

ArenaNet can take active steps to improve the bosses that are being zerged, and I sincerely hope we see more mechanically challenging (I use it very loosely) fights like we see in the QP. Zerging would still be boring though, since it’s lenient content designed for groups of casual, uncoordinated, and frankly bad players.

Unless my grasp on the English language is flawed, discussion about zergs in a thread with a title and OP about zerging is extremely relevant to the topic at hand.

(edited by Larynx.2453)

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Posted by: VodCom.6924

VodCom.6924

The zerg, in GW2, is what I described. The “core” content of the game is spamming 1 semi-AFK, that is zerging in GW2. Zerging is inherently boring due to the nature of having that many players. In order for the content to be doable, the content needs to be trivial and require very little mechanical effort.

See 40+ man raiding in any MMO ever. Individual effort is basically showing up.

Don’t confuse mindless zerg and raid in GW2. Any champ train is a mindless zerg. Mega-bosses look like a zergy event, but any veteran player of tequatl will tell you that nobody stands idle when doing teq nor smashes 1. Tabbing is suicide there.

What confuses a lot of people around the pavillion is that Boss Blitz requires a significant level of coordination (like a raid) while looking like a champ train. Worse is that the event allows you to play mindlessly. The catch is : in the end this will cost you more money that what you’ll earn.

Conlcusion: do NOT hate the zerg. Teach the zerg the good practices. Using brain is a difficult activity and people have to be shaken so that the head starts working. And everyone starts winning shinies (or tokens)

Known as Reegar Else, Linda Else, Xiana Else and Thorgall Breakstone

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Posted by: Ohoni.6057

Ohoni.6057

The zerg, in GW2, is what I described. The “core” content of the game is spamming 1 semi-AFK, that is zerging in GW2.

No, that’s something else entirely. I don’t know what that is. I play zerg content CONSTANTLY and I NEVER just spam auto-attack (except when all my other moves are on cooldown, of course). If I just spam 1 then one of two things happen. Either there will be enough other players around that I’m not at risk, which means that spamming 1 will not generate enough damage for me to get loot from the enemy when it dies (ala the current Hydra Queen meta and a few other world bosses and champs), or there are not enough players around to reduce the risk, and if I just stand around spamming 1 then I’ll die from enemy attacks (ala most other content).

ArenaNet can take active steps to improve the bosses that are being zerged, and I sincerely hope we see more mechanically challenging (I use it very loosely) fights like we see in the QP. Zerging would still be boring though, since it’s lenient content designed for groups of casual, uncoordinated, and frankly bad players.

I don’t have any problems with the core mechanics of the QP bosses. They are actually pretty interesting, at first. What absolutely KILLS the fun of them though is the scaling and the anti-zerg mechanics of it. The mechanisms they use in an attempt to discourage zergs are horrendous for the game and only encourage people to not bother with it at all. They lead to fights where the enemies have basically infinite HP and the fights take ten times longer than they were intended to.

If they don’t want players to zerg then they need to do more than discourage it, they need to PREVENT it. Take the QP boss chains, for example. How could you do it right?

Step 1, REMOVE the Gauntlet. Players waiting around to fight Liandri should not be taking up space from people who could be running the Blitz event.

Step 2, hard lockout individual slices. Make it so that if they intend for 150 players to divide up in groups of 30, then make it that way. Lock all entrance to the slices except for one teleport in. Make it so that you can only use the teleport if you’re attuned to that slice. Make it so that when you die, you lose attunement. Make it so that when the event starts, only 5 people can gain attunement for each slice (30 total). Once each slice has 4 or more attunements then it opens up to 10 each. One 8 or more are attuned for each it opens up to 15 each, and so on until they are all full. A display of the number of players attuned to each would be shown in the event tracker, along with life bars for all bosses.

This is similar to how the watchknights worked, and similar to how the Marionette worked, only slightly more flexible, since attunement slots would free up if a player died or was disconnected or something, which would reduce problems like with the Marionette when one platform had nobody on it. If one boss was failing because they had lost players, other players could always pick up the slack.
This would mean that at any given time each slice would have roughly equal numbers of players, and it would be impossible to zerg one and ignore others. I’d be fine with that, I’m just not fine with mechanics that allow players to zerg, which is the natural way to play with multiple characters, but then punishes them for doing it. You can argue “well don’t do it then” until you’re blue in the face, but I only have control over my own avatar, I don’t have control of anyone else’s, and I’m tired of failing events because the other players aren’t willing to buy into ANet’s philosophies.

“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”

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Posted by: Romek.4201

Romek.4201

Autoattack AFK in a zerg is very dynamic and interesting gameplay…

When someone can literally tab out for 30-60 seconds at a time, not die, and do 90% optimal performance, you done messed up somewhere.

but joining a ts with 100+ ppl trieing to organize for 2 hours all this ppl to do one supercool arenanet-world-event is more fun?

a game with the idea to bring everyone in same zone (megaserver) is countered by the idea to bring content which need high organisation

the result of this formula will never bring fun – its just annoying

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Posted by: Carighan.6758

Carighan.6758

but joining a ts with 100+ ppl trieing to organize for 2 hours all this ppl to do one supercool arenanet-world-event is more fun?

It genuinely is! :O
There’s a bunch of really cool people in TxS, for example. I first stumbled into them by ending up in the zone they used for killing Tequatl (most impressive event I’ve seen, they were killing it so smoothly), later I applied, and while I suppose there’s a bunch of people I couldn’t stand there (after all, it’s a giant alliance), they’re really a lot of fun to do stuff with.

Obligatory shout out to the other Crimsoneers, ofc!

The strength of heart to face oneself has been made manifest. The persona Carighan has appeared.

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Posted by: Nadha.6097

Nadha.6097

Ohoni.6057 does a pretty good analysis of what I was thinking without being able to put it in words.

I have not tried the Blizz yet, but I remember the Scarlet invasions, I did two of them successfully, after that they just “dipped” – nobody whatsoever cared for the event itself but to spawn Champs and I stopped doing them.

The missing mechanics to coordinate many people on a map well without 3rd party voicecom also affect GW2 in other areas of the game (WvW has asked for a long time for different grouping options or different tags) so one could actually see where the others are and distribute oneself accordingly once you have understood what the event in question needs at any time to succeed.

I do like very much that there are events created that cannot successfully be done with zerging only but please give better in game coordination options for them!

ie. ^ A display of the number of players attuned to each would be shown in the event tracker, along with life bars for the bosses.

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Posted by: Xae Isareth.1364

Xae Isareth.1364

I was surprised at the level to which this event has been degraded in its design.

1 – Doesn’t drop tier 5 and 6 mats (which we desperately need due to horrible pricing at the moment)

2 – Apparently expects group splitting, but lacks any means to assist players in doing that.

3 – Terrible rewards that in no way match the time and effort the event requires.

4 – Bosses that are uneven in difficulty and that usually punish melee.

5 – Having to pay to begin the event.

Needless to say, it could only really be worse if it, say, permanently killed our characters on death or something similarly disastrous. As it is, there is just no reason to do this and I`m already seeing people simply going elsewhere.

1. I don’t really see why we ‘need’ T6 mats. Care to explain?
2. Grouping into groups in the main pavilion area is enough to distinguish yourselves. We separate ourselves fine on Wurn and Tequatl, so I don’t really see why this is a pribl. A raiding tool would be nifty, but its not hard to get around it.
3. I agree. But I don’t know what the drops for gold is like, since we can’t kick players out of the pavilion to find out.
4. I don’t really see the problem of bosses being uneven in difficulty, it doesn’t exactly affect the overall mechanic of the event. It’s not like Wurm where you need to kill them at the same time.

I don’t think it punishes melee. I actually think its brilliant. Melee does more damage, so subsequently it’s harder to pull off. Stuff like CoF where melee and ranged are equally easy to pull off and thus giving you no incentive to range at all is the problem.
5. Agree. But we do need a way to stop griefers from starting the event prematurely.

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Posted by: Zok.4956

Zok.4956

The zerg, whether you like it or not, is a core aspect of this game. Mechanics that you put in to split up zergs make the game LESS fun, not more fun

I would like to see good mechanics, that split up zergs. That could be MORE fun.

That would mean, that the game should give some direct visible indication, at what positions/places additional players are needed and where no. And it should not depend on 6 players that put their blue lamp on.

And of course, the “megaserver-mapchat-language-filter” should be disabled (and the megaserver-language-problem should be solved), so that everyone can read the informations/hints in mapchat from other players.

Greetings.

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Posted by: Lunar Sunset.8742

Lunar Sunset.8742

Hard to split up a zerg when there is only 1 commander on the map, people like sticking together. This event isn’t gonna work unless there is a structured group that does it… Oh well, I only tag the last boss and then go back to the gauntlet anyways.

Sunset
50/50 GWAMM x3
I quit how I want

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Posted by: Brother Grimm.5176

Brother Grimm.5176

OP obviously does not realize that it’s less about HATING the ZERG than about doing the event properly to earn BETTER rewards….. Then again, maybe some players want to use Skill 1, die repeatedly and be AFK for 40 minutes than actually FIGHT a boss (maybe 2) for less than 10 minutes and earn much better loot…..that seems typical of some of the GW2 player base.

We go out in the world and take our chances
Fate is just the weight of circumstances
That’s the way that lady luck dances

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Posted by: Ohoni.6057

Ohoni.6057

OP obviously does not realize that it’s less about HATING the ZERG than about doing the event properly to earn BETTER rewards….. Then again, maybe some players want to use Skill 1, die repeatedly and be AFK for 40 minutes than actually FIGHT a boss (maybe 2) for less than 10 minutes and earn much better loot…..that seems typical of some of the GW2 player base.

Again, not paying attention, but at least some other people are actually reading.

“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”

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Posted by: Zanshin.5379

Zanshin.5379

6 commander tags.

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Posted by: wingofbenu.4316

wingofbenu.4316

6 commander tags.

and how do you propose evenly dividing people between these tags via nothing but the existence of said tags?

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Posted by: Artanis.4963

Artanis.4963

I don’t have any problems with the core mechanics of the QP bosses. They are actually pretty interesting, at first. What absolutely KILLS the fun of them though is the scaling and the anti-zerg mechanics of it. The mechanisms they use in an attempt to discourage zergs are horrendous for the game and only encourage people to not bother with it at all. They lead to fights where the enemies have basically infinite HP and the fights take ten times longer than they were intended to.

I regret that I only have one +1 to give.

This is absolutely the problem. The event itself is fine. The mechanics are fine, the reward style is fine.

What’s missing (and what the rest of your post describes) are “required secondary mechanics”.

I don’t think locking players out of the regions is a good idea, though. Leave them open, just report the player counts at each boss, and restrict the number of players that can engage each boss.

During the event, as bosses are killed and grant their abilities to the others, replace their HP bar with just that: “Wiggin the Wicked is empowering the remaining bosses!”

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Posted by: Ohoni.6057

Ohoni.6057

I don’t think locking players out of the regions is a good idea, though. Leave them open, just report the player counts at each boss, and restrict the number of players that can engage each boss.

If they can, that’d be fine too. Part of the problem with the Watchwork Knights was that they seemed to scale to the number of players around, even if they were unattuned. So like if 50 people were attuned and fighting a Knight, but 75 players were there anyways, fifteen of them being very stupid and/or trolling, then the fight would be very sloggy for 50 people to beat, as it had 75-players’-worth of HP but only 50 players worth of DPS (and realistically less than that).

If the game would allow 40 people to be around the fight, but only 30 of them to deal any damage, then the content would have to scale ONLY based on attuned players, and the scaling would have to completely ignore unattuned ones.

I really don’t see a problem in locking out unattuned players though, so long as they could enter after the boss is dead to farm mobs or whatever. If they aren’t capable of helping with the boss fight, they have no reason to be there.

“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”

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Posted by: Sankofa Jimiyu.1567

Sankofa Jimiyu.1567

Don’t hate on the zerg. The zerg, whether you like it or not, is a core aspect of this game. Mechanics that you put in to split up zergs make the game LESS fun, not more fun.

Game Release Notes:May 20, 2014

Champion Event Conversion on Starter Maps Many champion events in the starter maps have been converted into veterans. This change is being made to ensure new players focus on learning the core game experience.

Nerfing the Champ Trains in starting areas are a pretty good indication the developers are clearly hoping to steer players away from the zergs. People got used to just DPSing enemies to death when first playing and now those same players call that the core of their gaming experience. This has been exploited in starter areas by players and bots, leaving little daylight between.
In short, it is a lie to think that what works in Queensdale, works everywhere.
With more and more foes becoming immune to zerging, we as players need to become better at communication and knowing our opponents and allies.
Splitting into teams to deal with the Queen’s Pavilion champs is if you are trying for a gold. silver or bronze completion reward. If you want to zerg, you get xp, a little consolation prize and wasted 15+ minutes of a foe scaled to deal with the excessively to give you the hint:
Zergs are obsolete.

“Look like the innocent flower, but be the Obaba under’t.”

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Posted by: Kasima.8143

Kasima.8143

2. Grouping into groups in the main pavilion area is enough to distinguish yourselves. We separate ourselves fine on Wurn and Tequatl, so I don’t really see why this is a pribl.

Really? You find that splitting in a map that is directly connected to one of the most populated cities – thus accessible to all pugs on earth – isn’t a problem?

This isn’t Sparkfly Fen or Bloodtide Coast where a few people just happen to be there, it’s a time-limited event connected to a highly populated city, where people go and don’t even have the same goal in mind.

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Posted by: Brother Grimm.5176

Brother Grimm.5176

OP obviously does not realize that it’s less about HATING the ZERG than about doing the event properly to earn BETTER rewards….. Then again, maybe some players want to use Skill 1, die repeatedly and be AFK for 40 minutes than actually FIGHT a boss (maybe 2) for less than 10 minutes and earn much better loot…..that seems typical of some of the GW2 player base.

Again, not paying attention, but at least some other people are actually reading.

I fully read your OP. You are stating that because YOU like to ZERG no content that does not SUPPORT the Zerg mentality should exist….. You emphatically imply that everyone should enjoy Zerging and it’s not “GW2 cannon” if you don’t “embrace the Zerg”…..total tripe.

I’ve got no problem with Zerg content existing, but there should be OTHER content and Anet attempting to design something that punishes massive Zerg behavior is NOT a horrific crime against the “core gameplay”, but just an attempt to do something that requires DIFFERENT gameplay. Now whether or not it is a successful attempt remains to be seen as I have only tried the Blitz 2 or 3 times so far and have never gotten anything better than a Bronze Chest (mostlly BECAUSE too many players “embrace the ZERG”.

We go out in the world and take our chances
Fate is just the weight of circumstances
That’s the way that lady luck dances

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Posted by: Kasima.8143

Kasima.8143

Don’t hate on the zerg. The zerg, whether you like it or not, is a core aspect of this game. Mechanics that you put in to split up zergs make the game LESS fun, not more fun.

Game Release Notes:May 20, 2014

Champion Event Conversion on Starter Maps Many champion events in the starter maps have been converted into veterans. This change is being made to ensure new players focus on learning the core game experience.

Nerfing the Champ Trains in starting areas are a pretty good indication the developers are clearly hoping to steer players away from the zergs. People got used to just DPSing enemies to death when first playing and now those same players call that the core of their gaming experience. This has been exploited in starter areas by players and bots, leaving little daylight between.
In short, it is a lie to think that what works in Queensdale, works everywhere.
With more and more foes becoming immune to zerging, we as players need to become better at communication and knowing our opponents and allies.
Splitting into teams to deal with the Queen’s Pavilion champs is if you are trying for a gold. silver or bronze completion reward. If you want to zerg, you get xp, a little consolation prize and wasted 15+ minutes of a foe scaled to deal with the excessively to give you the hint:
Zergs are obsolete.

Don’t you love when people tell you what you should find fun and what you shouldn’t? Anet is telling us that we are wrong if we like running a train. Well Anet, I think you are wrong if you think that your heart quests, escort missions, toxic offshoots and map completion are a fun thing to do as a lowbie. What about that? If players liked to run a champ train more than they liked the other things in the game, what the hell is it to them? Why can’t they just let people do what they enjoy and not do what they don’t enjoy? They must be anti-fun and anti-community. They didn’t want the game to be a soloed grindfest, yet that’s exactly what they’re doing by removing something that is actually fun to do with a big group of people in the early game and leaving us with boring and tedious things like heart quests, escort missions (that can be soloed) and toxic shoot missions. By removing the champ trains they instantly made the early game more boring and tedious to a crapload of players and sent us all the message that we were wrong to enjoy running a train and that we should instead enjoy things that are greatly more boring. If I hadn’t found the train in QD by the 3rd day of playing GW2, I would have quit. I was starting to find the game underwhelming.

Anet, do you know what a game is? A game is meant to have fun. If you remove something fun from a game, you make it less of a game. Sounds obvious right? Well apparently it’s not obvious enough.

TL;DR : Why Anet would remove something fun from the (early) game is beyond me.

(edited by Kasima.8143)

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Posted by: Lambent.6375

Lambent.6375

OP obviously does not realize that it’s less about HATING the ZERG than about doing the event properly to earn BETTER rewards….. Then again, maybe some players want to use Skill 1, die repeatedly and be AFK for 40 minutes than actually FIGHT a boss (maybe 2) for less than 10 minutes and earn much better loot…..that seems typical of some of the GW2 player base.

Again, not paying attention, but at least some other people are actually reading.

I fully read your OP. You are stating that because YOU like to ZERG no content that does not SUPPORT the Zerg mentality should exist….. You emphatically imply that everyone should enjoy Zerging and it’s not “GW2 cannon” if you don’t “embrace the Zerg”…..total tripe.

No, he is saying anti zerg content was implemented poorly, and shouldn’t be implemented while there are still no in game tools to aid with the coordination that these events require.

“Caithe, someday you’ll see, Tyria needs me. -Scarlet”

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Posted by: APunch.7581

APunch.7581

What did we do during the Twisted Marionette content to get people to split into the different paths that we can’t do for the Pavilion? Somehow we were organized enough then to distribute the population.

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Posted by: Gyler.8150

Gyler.8150

If you are autoattacking from range with signets and a bear, you are doing it wrong.

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Posted by: A Massive Headache.1879

A Massive Headache.1879

no, you can hate the zerg, if there aren’t enough commanders, don’t tag up. it just takes a functioning brain to realize, hey we’re supposed to kill them all at once. if you zerg, you don’t deserve much. i mean you can organize it during the wait of the funds. it’s not hard.

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Posted by: Blaeys.3102

Blaeys.3102

The “zerg” does not have to be a core aspect of the game.

We need more events like this one to temper and change mindsets. Once players get accustomed to a better way, they will have more fun and be ready for new content when it first comes out.

We saw this with Marionette – it took a few days for the players to acclimate – and were starting to see it in the Blitz, evidenced by the growing number of groups (including some I would still categorize as mostly unorganized) that are getting silver and gold.

Events dont have to require extreme coordination, but mindless blob fights simply are not fun. I like that they are moving content like this away from that mindset.

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Posted by: Ohoni.6057

Ohoni.6057

I fully read your OP. You are stating that because YOU like to ZERG no content that does not SUPPORT the Zerg mentality should exist….. You emphatically imply that everyone should enjoy Zerging and it’s not “GW2 cannon” if you don’t “embrace the Zerg”…..total tripe.

Nope, again not reading. Try again, learn, adapt. I’m going to take a page from ANet’s playbook and not tell you how you’re doing it wrong, I’m just going to expect that you figure it out eventually.

Well Anet, I think you are wrong if you think that your heart quests, escort missions, toxic offshoots and map completion are a fun thing to do as a lowbie. What about that? If players liked to run a champ train more than they liked the other things in the game, what the hell is it to them?

A fair point. If the players are finding a given activity to be the most fun and rewarding, and you’d prefer they do other things, the solution is not to make that thing less fun and rewarding, it’s to make the other activities MORE fun and rewarding.

What did we do during the Twisted Marionette content to get people to split into the different paths that we can’t do for the Pavilion? Somehow we were organized enough then to distribute the population.

I don’t know about you, but we would all group in lane one, clear it, and then the event would fail soon after, but we at least got the loot from lane one. If there were enough players we could maybe manage lane two as well, but after the first week or so that became almost impossible. If I was really lucky and guested and camped out in the zone for an hour in advance then I might be able to get into a group that was actually organized and attempting the full clear, and I even got a full clear twice in the first week, but after that it just collapsed because people didn’t have time for the hassle.

We need more events like this one to temper and change mindsets. Once players get accustomed to a better way, they will have more fun and be ready for new content when it first comes out.

Or they will get frustrated and give up entirely. I have no problem with them designing content that requires more than a single zerg, but the content has to FORCE players into the right mold, not just hope that they find it on their own.

Think of it like flowing water. Water will always find the path of least resistance. The default GW2 meta is a single gushing flow of water, pounding a single target at the bottom of a hill. Anet seems to not like this, so what they do is they set up several other targets to the left and right of that flow, and if you don’t hit all of them at once then everyone fails, but like water, the flow just keeps flowing towards the middle one, failure or no. What they need to do instead is put in obstacles to the flow that FORCES the flow to split off and hit the multiple targets, that makes it not just unrewarding but actually IMPOSSIBLE to all flow towards a single target.

There are only TWO ways to take the core of the Blitz events and make them work well:

A. They reduce the scaling to allow it to be zerg trained. It would seem ANet doesn’t want this, it would seem a lot of you wouldn’t want this, but it would still be preferable to the current state in which the zerg train occurs anyways, the event fails, and everyone involved has a terrible time.

B. They put in mechanisms to actually PREVENT a zerg. Not just punish the zerg for zergging, but actually makes it impossible to zerg. I described a version of this above, but other versions might work, but there need to be mechanisms to actually PREVENT people from grouping up against a single boss, rather than just slapping their wrists when they do so anyways. We need fences, not shock collars.

I don’t care which way they do it. I don’t mind zerging, but I’m not attached to it when the alternative works just as well. The current alternative does NOT work just as well, however.

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Posted by: digiowl.9620

digiowl.9620

Hardly. The problem with getting a proper split is simple. Even if you tell everyone “go to X boss”, theyll assume someone else will go, and therefore NOBODY goes.

Nailed it in one!

The basic problem is group psychology. The larger the group, the harder it becomes to take initiative. End result is that everyone stand around unless someone with a semblance of authority specifically orders that person to take action.

Also, the automatic scaling is wonky. I suspect that ANet has calculated some “average” DPS pr character and used that to tune the health scaling.

Problem is that if you get say 5 people in defensive gear, the boss will take longer than average. and if you get 5 in DPS gear it will be a short fight.

End result is that unless you bring the DPS you risk actually making a situation worse by showing up at a boss that is lagging behind. This because the additional health may be more than the additional DPS you bring, making the fight take longer than if you stayed away.

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Posted by: Mojo.7964

Mojo.7964

I know there are players that want the most challenging events possible. I know there are those who want strict organization and teamwork to pay off. I’m ok with that.

On the other hand, I don’t see the problem with logging in, jumping on a champ train, and getting a little XP/loot while chatting with friends. Sure, some people will take it too far. That’s what diminishing returns is supposed to remedy.

I honestly don’t expect every LS event to be mindless 1 mashing. I know GW2 has a large, diverse community and everyone has their own ideas of what makes a game fun. However, throwing the zerg an occasional bone isn’t hurting anything. Sometimes I want to just veg out and jump on the zerg, and sometimes I want a challenge. Both are completely valid play styles, and both should be viable. I’m not saying you should be able to farm up a legendary over a solid weekend of zerging. I’m just saying let the players decide how they want to play instead of trying to force us to play how YOU think we should.

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Posted by: kettering.6823

kettering.6823

Man, I’m what people would probably call a ‘casual’ player, but even I expect – and WANT – to work for my rewards. I hate the zerg. Hate it. I was so excited when I saw what was supposed to be coordinated, non-zerging content. Unfortunately, there are people that don’t actually want to play this game. Pressing one is playing the game for them. They complain when they have to actually do work. I do not understand this.

Guild Wars 2 is a ‘casual’ game, but not so casual that you should expect to do nothing and achieve spectacular rewards. That’s ludicrous.

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Posted by: Ohoni.6057

Ohoni.6057

Unfortunately, there are people that don’t actually want to play this game. Pressing one is playing the game for them. They complain when they have to actually do work. I do not understand this.

God, why does this keep coming up?

NOBODY WANTS “PRESS 1” GAMEPLAY.

Nobody. You are arguing to nobody, because nobody is arguing against you. That is not what is happening here. Nobody wants that.

Nobody.

The topic under discussion is the zerg, the grouping of all available players in a single mass to accomplish a task, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the skills that are asked of that group once it has been assembled.

Nobody is asking for even a slight reduction in challenge, just a reduction in the need for coordination between a bunch of players that don’t know each other and don’t care to.

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Posted by: CuRtoKy.8576

CuRtoKy.8576

Unfortunately, there are people that don’t actually want to play this game. Pressing one is playing the game for them. They complain when they have to actually do work. I do not understand this.

God, why does this keep coming up?

NOBODY WANTS “PRESS 1” GAMEPLAY.

Nobody. You are arguing to nobody, because nobody is arguing against you. That is not what is happening here. Nobody wants that.

Nobody.

The topic under discussion is the zerg, the grouping of all available players in a single mass to accomplish a task, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the skills that are asked of that group once it has been assembled.

Nobody is asking for even a slight reduction in challenge, just a reduction in the need for coordination between a bunch of players that don’t know each other and don’t care to.

Actually that is the challenge having to work together to accomplish something. Not having it would make it easier since any mechanic that requires you to play or coordinate together is what makes it hard. If you aren’t required to do something extra it just comes down to dps which is what every zerg living story event in the past year.

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Posted by: Vargamonth.2047

Vargamonth.2047

Nobody is asking for even a slight reduction in challenge, just a reduction in the need for coordination between a bunch of players that don’t know each other and don’t care to.

All it takes to make the Boss Blitz event work is to gather every interested player in the central plaza before activation and position themselves close to the fence towards the sector where the boss they want to fight is. Those without any clear preference should reallocate theselves to make the distribution as evenly as possible.
After that, the event is activated and everyone goes to the boss they chose.

The amount of coordination needed to do this is almost nonexistant and can hardly be reduced.
If some players prefer to ignore this minor preparation phase and kill regular enemies for achievements or try some gauntlet fights until the event is already running, that’s a completely different issue and the only thing ANet could do to prevent it is to stop designing counterproductive achievements.

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Posted by: Ohoni.6057

Ohoni.6057

Actually that is the challenge having to work together to accomplish something.

That’s not a challenge, that’s just either something that will work, or not. It’s like flipping a coin. If you have players around you that are willing and able to cooperate strategically, then it will work. If you don’t, it won’t. There’s nothing you can do about it, so there’s no challenge involved.

If you aren’t required to do something extra it just comes down to dps which is what every zerg living story event in the past year.

Ok. Try that then. Get six well coordinated teams to split up perfectly evenly. Then, just stand in front of the Blitz bosses, and remove all fingers from the controls except for one jamming “1”. See how well you do, I can wait. . .

I would posit that this strategy would be unlikely to succeed, coordination or no. I would posit that the REAL challenge in these fights is to recognize the boss-unique mechanisms and to overcome them, largely through clever ability use and dodging.

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Posted by: Pandaman.4758

Pandaman.4758

They should just stick access controls at each gate and only allow a maximum of 15 people to fight each boss (and flip the gates open between events so people can farm mob kills for the achievement). The way the event is designed now is just punitive toward people who want to organize because there is a subset of players who either cannot or refuse to organize.

What if AFKers jump into boss fights to leech? Well, throw a debuff that stacks over time on everyone who enters that can only be reduced if they use skills (just not the auto-attack skill), when the debuff hits a certain amount they get booted out and get hit with another debuff that prevents entry until the end of the event.

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Posted by: CuRtoKy.8576

CuRtoKy.8576

That’s not a challenge, that’s just either something that will work, or not. It’s like flipping a coin. If you have players around you that are willing and able to cooperate strategically, then it will work. If you don’t, it won’t. There’s nothing you can do about it, so there’s no challenge involved.

There is a challenge. Wurm for example. You can have simple strategies and complex strategies. No boss mechanic will make something difficult yet require no coordination. Since complex difficult mechanics in open world by nature requires everyone to play well and specifically play well with others. If someone making a mistake doesn’t matter how can a mechanic be hard/difficult since if you make a mistake it won’t matter.

This idea only applies in solo play which GW2 does not have.

Ok. Try that then. Get six well coordinated teams to split up perfectly evenly. Then, just stand in front of the Blitz bosses, and remove all fingers from the controls except for one jamming “1”. See how well you do, I can wait. . .

I would posit that this strategy would be unlikely to succeed, coordination or no. I would posit that the REAL challenge in these fights is to recognize the boss-unique mechanisms and to overcome them, largely through clever ability use and dodging.

You just proved my point. QP last year was doable just spamming 1 this year it isn’t and it require coordination. You need to coordinate a strategy.

If you remove coordination then that means you need to make the bosses easier in some way to account for the fact that you can’t coordinate so if someone makes a mistake then it won’t affect you. So how is removing coordination possible when you want hard content unless it is solo instance. At some level you have to coordinate otherwise you have to dumb things down (lower hp, easier mechanics) because you have to account for the fact that everyone is playing for themselves (zero coordination) and that if someone makes a mistake then it shouldn’t affect anyone else who is playing well. If a person’s mistake affects other people’s success that means coordination is required either to complete the content or to the highest reward. So no matter how unique a mechanic is it requires coordination in open world unless it is for solo play which in that case it needs to be instanced.

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Posted by: Ohoni.6057

Ohoni.6057

There is a challenge. Wurm for example. You can have simple strategies and complex strategies. No boss mechanic will make something difficult yet require no coordination. Since complex difficult mechanics in open world by nature requires everyone to play well and specifically play well with others. If someone making a mistake doesn’t matter how can a mechanic be hard/difficult since if you make a mistake it won’t matter.

The law of averages. If you design content to work for large groups, then you design it on the assumption that a certain portion of them will completely kitten it up, but that the rest will figure it out.

If you design it properly then the mechanics will become obvious enough over a short amount of time, such as the Ogre Birdseed mechanic, which I figured out for myself on the first day and spread to the other players (several of whom likely also figured it out themselves). We won that boss fight, but lost the encounter because we had played the game how ANet had trained us to over two years, by grouping together and taking each threat out one at a time.

If you design it properly then the punishments, and the reasons for it, are obvious to the user, and without having to be told, or trial and error it, players would know automatically “this event has too many people at it, some of us should leave, but we will still receive full rewards for completing it.”

You just proved my point. QP last year was doable just spamming 1 this year it isn’t and it require coordination. You need to coordinate a strategy.

And while QP last year didn’t bother me, I don’t mind the mechanics changes to this years either, EXCEPT for the scaling issues. I’m not complaining that they gave the bosses more unique effects to worry about, I don’t think anyone is, I’m complaining that they ALLOW the entire map to zerg a single boss, but harshly PUNISH players for doing so, by making them scale to take ten minutes or more each if you let them scale up like that. They should either NOT allow it, or NOT punish players for zerging it, I really don’t care which, but I am by no means advocating that they nerf the bosses’ unique mechanics or allow players to “spam 1” to complete it.

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Posted by: morrolan.9608

morrolan.9608

You do not currently have the tools in place to allow players to well coordinate multiple parties of appropriate sizes. If you enter a map, the question is “where is everyone? Ok, then that is where I want to be.”

This is the salient point, OK anet want to break up the zerg and make fights more challenging. Fine give us the tools to manage this properly then. There is nothing in the game to manage large scale fights.

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Posted by: Carighan.6758

Carighan.6758

A fair point. If the players are finding a given activity to be the most fun and rewarding, and you’d prefer they do other things, the solution is not to make that thing less fun and rewarding, it’s to make the other activities MORE fun and rewarding.

While there’s a difference between encounter-design and class-design, do keep in mind that “buff always” is a terrible approach to balance. It’s not a good mantra by which to work at all.

Evaluate it on a per-case basis.

In this case, we seem to be talking about “rewards” btw, and the “fun” players take from farming them (as that seems to be the big issue for many here, too much time spent for too little cash income, reward-ratio is too low).
In that case, it’s a matter of your economy person telling you what the targeted gold-per-hour rate for this activity should be so as to be economy-neutral. Or if it’s intended to inflate (for farming activities) or deflate (for spending activities), by how much it’s supposed to do that.

And then just rebalance it to that level.
You already have an optimum income level for gameplay. Your economy determines it. ANet isn’t exactly fast with patching this, but they usually do react to economy issues eventually.

Example, Pavillion. Though I somewhat think they overdid it, I see the real issue (at gold the income is quite good) with the way the UI fails to communicate either mechanics or state of the event, not with the event itself.

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Posted by: Ohoni.6057

Ohoni.6057

While there’s a difference between encounter-design and class-design, do keep in mind that “buff always” is a terrible approach to balance. It’s not a good mantra by which to work at all.

Evaluate it on a per-case basis.

Buff always is not always a good idea, but buffing should always be the first option, discarded only when doing so would cause other problems. When dealing with content choice though, if the champ trains have been allowed to run for about a year now without destroying the game, then surely they could either add new content that is similar but different in a way they’d prefer, and not nerf champ trains until a better alternative structure existed. I didn’t do those trains much myself, but I recognized their value.

In this case, we seem to be talking about “rewards” btw, and the “fun” players take from farming them (as that seems to be the big issue for many here, too much time spent for too little cash income, reward-ratio is too low).

Rewards are inevitably part of the experience. I enjoy just playing the game well enough, there are activities I would do for no reward in small doses, but I also like to feel that I’ve made rewards appropriate to my efforts, and some activities are not so fun that I would do them if the rewards were not worth it (like Boss Blitz).

“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”