Guild Wars 2

I know, I know, the last thing this forum needs is another Crab Toss thread! But hear me out.

TL;DR: please read the last paragraph.

I am a player who was immediately annoyed, stressed and frustrated by Crab Toss. I am not awesome at it (I’m not super hot at Keg Brawler either). People are different, some find this sort of thing easy and some can’t deal so well with too much information to process at the same time. I am one of those people. Hungry for achievement completion, I forces myself through crab toss games, often coming in last place with 0 points (yes, that bad).

Tonight, however, I suddenly had fun.
What was different?

- There were fewer people in the game. This alleviated the feeling of chaos / being overwhelmed.
- The players that were present, weren’t total jerks about being better at Crab Toss. No L2P, instead helpful hints.
- For both these reasons ^ I actually got better.
- My competition for the most part wasn’t super awesome at the game either, this also helped me have minor successes that kept me going.

I ended up top player in every single category (afaik) at least once; I legitimately won 2 or 3 matches; I legitimately even got Crabtacular. (I say “legitimately” as I had both Crabtacular and Crab Toss Champion before but, I think, in conjunction with the “double crabs” bug (thread).) Crabtacular is of course a lot easier if fewer people are present.
But having some success as opposed to constant frustration meant a lot to me.

What can be taken away from this?

The SAB succeeded (in my opinion) where Crab Toss failed: It gave people an easy start (both with zones that got progressively harder and with baby mode). Players could learn and improve at their own pace. The learning curve was not “too steep” but flexible, and thus players could avoid frustration for as long as they felt they needed.

Obviously in a PvP game (which Crab Toss totally is – we’re even wearning PvP armor) this isn’t possible as you’re immediately competing with other players.

Solutions for Crab Toss

Some of these ideas have come up in other threads, but my experiences tonight pretty much confirmed them. Crab Toss would have caused less negative player feedback if:

- there were different difficulty levels (i.e. 3-player match (easier) and 8-player match (harder), or easy mode without veteran karkas) that players could progress through
- players were matched with other players of similar skill level (as per average score)
- there were more varied achievements, so player who are not awesome at stealing crabs could go for something else instead. (I enjoyed denying the most – sadly no achievement.)
- more Crab Toss players were friendly and communicative, or alternatively, if I could play with my own friends who I already know are friendly and communicative.

And now the whole point of this thread:

What does this mean for future mini games?

Mini games (no matter whether they’re PvP based or not) will be a success with the community if they are inclusive of the majority of players. People will love them if:

- you let players learn at their own pace. (different difficulty modes, or being matched with other players of similar skill level for balanced teams, …)
- they offer a diverse array of achievements.
- they have a friendly atmosphere (i.e. let players play with/against their friends if they choose)

/cheer if you agree. Or not! I am looking forward to reading your opinions.
Please keep “Crab Toss sucks!” and “Crab Toss is easy, YOU suck!” replies to the appropriate other threads, thank you

Personally I didn’t find the learning curve for Crab Toss too steep but as you said different people adjust to different things at a differnt pace.
The community working together always helps but I cannot tell you how many people have raged at me saying “You’ve won 3 games already! GTFO of here so some of us can get the achivement!”
These people don’t want to be helped, or learn how to play the game. They want everything handed to them on a silver plater and personally it infuriates me.
It really does make me happy that some people took the time to give you some poitners on how to play the game and now you are enjoying it. Helping other players and seeing them enjoy the game is its own reward and its great to read about as well.
For thoese of you interested, I made a video on how to play crab toss the other day as well as going over each of the skills and how they work here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/southsun/A-guide-on-How-to-Win-at-Crab-Toss/first#post2045231
Also while I really wish I could join with fellow guild members without having to time us entering at the same time I can see other players using this to abuse others.
Nice post BTW.

Quake had a little game mode called “catch the chicken”, which is rather similar to crab toss. Even back then, the greatest challenge in order to retain the chicken was to make accurate predictions about your opponents. Even more so, since crab toss takes place in a flat space instead of an interconnected web of corridors and short cuts.

Trying to win isn’t necessarily the best strategy to learn this game mode. Imo, it is better to learn how to efficiently hunt, since this will give you the best insight into how to avoid being hunted down.

I agree with having less people or at least an easy, medium, hard version you can choose from. For me it did make the difference in getting the achievement vs trying to play with a large number of people. There were only 3 including me in there and it was still challenging but a lot more fun. Once I got the achievement, I left the arena so the others would get their shot at it. I may go back periodically just to try to round out the other crab achievements, though.

When designing an MMO, the wide range of experience your players have must be considered when designing any content that requires them to compete against each other.

As the OP said, placing everyone in the same situation and assuming everyone is on equal ground is naive.

Anyone who has ever played any organized sport ever will tell you that serious problems can arise when players are not divided by experience level. Online games are no different.

I funny support a system in place for all PvP games where players are grouped according to experience/skill. This would mean so much less frustration from all players.

For me, I’ll grind my way through this mini-game. I don’t find it fun for various reasons, but this post has shown me that if I want the best chance of gaining some amount of entertainment out of it, I need to be much more choosy about which groups I play with.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

Anyone who has ever played any organized sport ever will tell you that serious problems can arise when players are not divided by experience level. Online games are no different.

I had much the same thought last night. Before last night, Crab Toss made me feel like I was the fat kid running after the ball and never getting a pass before collapsing in the grass and being made fun of by the other kids.

I’ve never been good at team sports / ball games and I’ve never been on a team outside PE, which I think has a lot to do with my low frustration threshold and me being so slow to learn how to go about Crab Toss tactics.

So, in my own life, PE = bad, but playing casual/friendly/no pressure basketball with the other nerdy kids after school = good, and I think this shows why it would have been a good idea to allow players to play with their own friends.

I would like to add that if they Crab Toss Daily achievement rotated through a few more different things, that would help too in making it more inclusive, and catering to more different players’ abilities and playing styles:

- Crab Toss Champion,
- crab grabs,
- crab carries,
- denies and
- evades

When is the least players playing crab toss? Each match I join is always full – never seen a match where there is just 3 – 5 players.

Hmm, when I went and got empty(ish) games, confusingly it was US afternoon/early evening. It shouldn’t have been empty, but it was.

I think this will get slightly easier with time though…

I would suggest adding a pve-training mode where 3 npcs grab the crab and you can exercise in taking it back… all 3 enemies with normal npc-running speed (slow)

I think game devs should definitely read this. I myself went and joined 1 match when this whole living story event started, and tbh I was lost, I had no idea what to do, where to go. All that happened was some huge veteran karka rolled over me, and pretty much stayed on top of me for the whole round while other players whined about lag and told person with the crab that he sucks and has nolife and whatnot.

The problem with pvp kind of stuff is and will always be the community. Only way to help this situation would be to add easy/hard difficulty like Pumpkin said. Also the problem with this activity are the achievements. I usually want to get as many achievements as possible. However I won’t do something that I don’t enjoy but it did annoy me quite a bit that this activity had 5 achievements tied to it (with 2 title ones).

I can’t really blame Anet too much though since this game is played by us players, and if players were nicer to each other it would fix most of the problems with this activity (and with many other not southsun related things).