Guild Wars 2

Aeolus.3615:

christiniae.7834:

This is a terrible idea. I won’t be able to play the content if it’s a dungeon or instance, I need the help from other players.

all instances even on story mode accept the 5 party man, game is built on top of that.

No. One MODE of the game is built on that concept. According to ANets released stats, less than 40% of the current players participate in Dungeons or Fractals.

yeah that event scaling can get out of control

i’m assuming thats what happened with this thug. xD

Lots of people give Anet a hard time about zerging for this update, but I think it’s unfair to do so.

The invasions are actually one of the better open world events put in this game to discourage the zerg. They smartly designed it so that if a server just zergs everything, it fails. Smaller groups are the way to go. It isn’t Anet’s fault if the large majority of people don’t realize this.

Think seriously about it for a minute. How would you design an open world large scale event that isn’t just pounded on by a mindless blob of people? IMO, they didn’t do too shabby.

If you want a more enjoyable experience, try shouting over map chat for people to join a small group to handle events on their own. With as many people in each map, it isn’t hard to find 4 other like minded individuals, and you’ll really help push the invasion to completion this way. Decent way to make new in game friends as well.

Nettle.9025:

Lots of people give Anet a hard time about zerging for this update, but I think it’s unfair to do so.

The invasions are actually one of the better open world events put in this game to discourage the zerg. They smartly designed it so that if a server just zergs everything, it fails. Smaller groups are the way to go. It isn’t Anet’s fault if the large majority of people don’t realize this.

Think seriously about it for a minute. How would you design an open world large scale event that isn’t just pounded on by a mindless blob of people? IMO, they didn’t do too shabby.

If you want a more enjoyable experience, try shouting over map chat for people to join a small group to handle events on their own. With as many people in each map, it isn’t hard to find 4 other like minded individuals, and you’ll really help push the invasion to completion this way. Decent way to make new in game friends as well.

You guys just don’t get it, do you?

The more people are in an event the more it scales so much more loot for everyone and with the last update (special loot on champ kill) this make zerging much more profitable.

That’s the word; profit.
Most of the people just look for ways of getting more and more profit of what they do. Theese kind of events giving people 20gold/hour make people forget about having fun and start farming.
Ofc can’t blame Anet for that…. well, they design a game for us to play it. The way it was designed and the way we actually play it are 2 different things. Soo are players guilty for playing however they want? No sir, we play within the rules we’re given its the rules what should be adjusted, not players.

except your wrong. beyond a point the enemies just get tougher without increasing in number. and that point is pretty low. and really we’re only talking about Aetherblades.

++ scaling doesnt increase the number of molten alliance and has little effect on twisted

So Anet, you decided to make your weakest gameplay, Tha Zerg the new permanent content – seriously?
ATM I´m so disgusted with this “new” content that I´ve decided to take a break after one year of loyally logging in to this game.

Maybe I´ll be back..
Edit:I liked the original thread title “Zerg Wars 2” better, perfectly fitting for what this game has become.

HawkMeister.4758:

So Anet, you decided to make your weakest gameplay, Tha Zerg the new permanent content – seriously?
ATM I´m so disgusted with this “new” content that I´ve decided to take a break after one year of loyally logging in to this game.

Maybe I´ll be back..
Edit:I liked the original thread title “Zerg Wars 2” better, perfectly fitting for what this game has become.

See ya. Hope you don’t cry as much in real life.

HawkMeister.4758:

So Anet, you decided to make your weakest gameplay, Tha Zerg the new permanent content – seriously?
ATM I´m so disgusted with this “new” content that I´ve decided to take a break after one year of loyally logging in to this game.

Maybe I´ll be back..
Edit:I liked the original thread title “Zerg Wars 2” better, perfectly fitting for what this game has become.

They decided to add new big dynamic events to the game that many people, not including yourself, asked for. They’re constantly adding new things. Some of it is solo content while others require large groups. They’re not always going to make what you want.

jobah.7241:

There are no zerg events in this patch – except for the last event in the invasion. That you don’t understand this only shows that YOU must be a zerger. Zerging in this invasion is something that you CHOOSE to do. However the events are clearly made so that people should split up in small groups to succed.

And everybody who is able to think for themselves would know that it is only in this initial fase that it is possible to zerg and win, because so many people want to try it out and do the achievements. But this is mostly only true for the high populated servers. I’ve guested a low populated server and they/we failed every invasion because they/we mindlessly zerged around.

So please, how about just trying to play the game like it was supposed to – instead doing what you hate: mindlessly zerging/farming.

I don’t understand people like you, i guess.

I am not saying that this patch is the best of all times. But Anet has actually tried to overcome the zerginess, it seems.

And by the way: There IS a dungeon in this patch.

Jobah, please come to Gandara and tell me whatever you just said. I don’t CHOOSE to be a zerger, and I can’t tell people to move on to another event. Moreover, if I keep moving from one event to the other until I find an empty event, I will get barely anything done. Players just pile up fast. Back in Orrian farm, people failed to wait 10 seconds before starting a champ, and many missed one after the other because of that. It is very hard to make people listen. Heck, there are times when we had 3-4 commanders doing the same invasion event.

Moreover, you need to finish all the achievements to get the tonic, whether you like it or not.

Yesterday, I had to group up with a guildie, who made it into one of the invasion instances, and spammed the join button to get into his overflow, otherwise I would have never been able to do the event. Now, imagine I didn’t know anyone who is doing the invasion, do you think it is fair to have to wait in queue doing nothing?
This isn’t WvW where it is fair for everyone to have a specific number of people from each server, this is PvE, where it isn’t fair for us to “queue” to do the invasion.

Finally, the “dungeon” you are talking about is more like a “story”. If you let’s say disconnect, you can’t go back inside and continue, and if you were the leader, you would have to start all over again. This isn’t a dungeon by the very least. Not to mention you can solo that in 10 min.

This picture is relevant to this topic.

Zacchary.6183:

This picture is relevant to this topic.

Yeah but is epic!

WvW, that pic is what i imagine when players atack Durios Tower.

The OP complains about people continue to farm pirates because of an “imbalance” that they spawn more champs. And they even do pirate events even if no more pirates need to be killed.

The pirates spawning too much champs will probably be fixed in the coming days.

Reason here is that most pirates start already at veteran level . Because of this they upgrade the level easier when more people come. Instead of three tiers normal -> veteran -> champs (plus hardcoded and random champs) the pirates go directly from veteran to champ instead of vetaran -> stay veteran -> become champ.

Basically scaling for pirates is bugged.

The pirates are just intended to be harder – not better loot by going to champs right away when more than X people are there. It should be same for minions as for pirates.

This is basically the same bug as in the farm pavillion when the centaurs spawned too much champs because they started also with veterans.

We can assume that Anet did a copy and paset job on the scripts here. Same bug, different event.

But if you do you distribute nicely you will get more loot as you will be on more events with more champs naturally as you do more events because the HP do not scale that much. The numbe of champs seems still to be capped per event.

So bigger zerg does not mean more champs. The champs just get more HP and it takes longer to kill them with the same loot. The event is time scaled on HP as it looks.

Just a smaller zerg is enough to get an event to champ level. Kill, loot, move on.

So the farmers are just hurting themselves by getting less loot and denying other a lot of champ bags because they run with farm commanders not understanding the scaling mechanics involved here and think more people will produce more champs over the whole invasion on a per event. This is not correct.

When I played the first day without the farmers we had champs everywhere because of distribution (we ran with about 5+ experienced WvW commanders) and came out with about 50-60% more champ bags (unless Anet silently nerfed minion events).

But hey the “pro farmers” always know it better, right? That’s probably why they still need to farm so much. xD

So, still waiting for the 13th map to finnaly show up (should be Timberline Falls) so I am done with the farmzerg-fest.

But in general the pure PvE commanders are the worst. Event fails, does not properly scale to champ level and people are dying because wrong mobs are attacked first. Even the farmers can do better than these guys.

Mizhas.8536:

You guys just don’t get it, do you?

The more people are in an event the more it scales so much more loot for everyone and with the last update (special loot on champ kill) this make zerging much more profitable.

Actually not, once the champ level is reached (which goes quickly) the HP just keep to scale, so it takes longer for an event to finish and you will have less events (portals close based on initial HP kills) and that means less loot over the whole invasion.

This has always been this way. Once the highest mob level is reached, HP begin to grow so it takes longer and everyone can get a hit. But that does not produce more loot.

One champ worth 100K HP will drop one champ bag. Two champs with 50K drop two.

And we are not dealing with a single event here, we have a lot of events. So it is profitable to do as much of them as possible as quick as possible.

But that requires some organization to distribute people. Usually a ton of commands helps a lot here. Better fi they are experienced and actually say where people are needed to get champs.

But posting “champ here” and everyone runs to it, will make the event fail because it takes too long to clear an event and in the end there will be less champs overalls (portals are closing on eliminated HP on the initial death of a mob – revived minions do not count again).

Pve culling changes same time as huge zerg event. Maybe they are using this to test changes.

You people don’t get it with your spread out farmers your hurting yourself nonsense…. As long as Captains alive and you keep killing his champs, not him, he spawns more champs in, so no you don’t jump from event to event as quick as you can.

Once people figure this out, you’ll see half of the map camped at one event point. Plus this scaled the captains health so doesn’t get killed by noob fire.

Don’t think you people really understand how many bags were talking about here……

lilstev.3498:

You people don’t get it with your spread out farmers your hurting yourself nonsense…. As long as Captains alive and you keep killing his champs, not him, he spawns more champs in, so no you don’t jump from event to event as quick as you can.

Once people figure this out, you’ll see half of the map camped at one event point. Plus this scaled the captains health so doesn’t get killed by noob fire.

Don’t think you people really understand how many bags were talking about here……

I’m afraid after a while, when many people get all of their achievements done, they will start aiming for that.

citizankane.5723:

Pve culling changes same time as huge zerg event. Maybe they are using this to test changes.

Thats what i tough also, couse when i checked when LS event was , i could load every one and everything just with some minor FPS drop(with all maxed settings).

All that seems to happen is a group appears and then the next moment my screen is flooded with every spell imaginable completely taking away the visual enjoyment of fighting.

Thankful I haven’t seen any of these 50-100 man zergs I can only Imagine the ammount of lag I’d suffer.

Traveller.7496:

What’s the difference between us and Scarlet again?

We have license to massacre… she does not have one….

lilstev.3498:

You people don’t get it with your spread out farmers your hurting yourself nonsense…. As long as Captains alive and you keep killing his champs, not him, he spawns more champs in, so no you don’t jump from event to event as quick as you can.

Once people figure this out, you’ll see half of the map camped at one event point. Plus this scaled the captains health so doesn’t get killed by noob fire.

Don’t think you people really understand how many bags were talking about here……

Usually something about 10 bags per event is the average, depends. Usually I come out with abou 50 bags out of an invasion event – and I am not event trying to farm. Just everywhere champs.

And the Captain does not spawn champs. They spawn on their own up to their cap. Unless of course it is bugged on your server. Saw him often alone last man standing with couple of minutes of the clock. Nothing more coming. Also no new pirate spots if old ones are still taken.

Anyway, happing farming…

Just putting in my support for the OP.
I’ve been rather disenchanted with the latest Living Story due to the mandatory zerg-fest. If it were an optional thing it wouldn’t bother me at all (since I could do something else instead), but you’re required to devote at least 6 invasions (or you can replace “invasions” with “hours” due to the structure of the events) in order to progress the “story” in the Living Story. I’ve managed to do it because I wanted to see the Playhouse, but none of it was enjoyable and I felt I couldn’t just not do it since it’s required for the more enjoyable playhouse and story progression.* This really felt like a grind to me, as though I were playing your standard MMO for the past couple of days, even down to a sense of “competition” against other people in order to reach an event first in order to get credit.

Also, I saw one interesting post:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Xae Isareth.1364:

It’s supposed to be a massive invasion, if said massive invasion can be repelled by 5 people, it’be more like a small skirmish.

Actually that would be truly heroic, imagine 5 people repelling a massive amount of enemies, then coming out victorious! It would feel like a real battle.

In original Guild Wars, there were some really crazy, challenging, and amazing massive fights using only a team of 8 to fend them off. You had to use strategy, change your builds around to manage the 10-to-1 odds, and even use the environment (funnel points, catapults, etc.) to win. Those were so hard but once you succeeded it left a real feeling of accomplishment and they felt like epic battles, as well. Two examples: Thunderhead Keep (Prophecies Campaign), Dzagonur Bastion (Nightfall Campaign).

• While I know you can just piggy back off of someone else who’s already done the necessary pre-requisites in order to access Playhouse, it’s obvious the devs intended for people to do the invasions first, otherwise why make them a pre-requisite in the story in the first place?

Content is great and fun.

This content reminds me of following the Bot trains that use to run in Orr, last year! Sad Anet couldn’t come up with something better 9 months later.

Players complain. Players complain that there are too many games, too many festivals, too many jumping puzzles, too many dungeons, too much group content, too many zergs, too many instances, too many treasure hunts, too many cosmetic rewards, too many collectables, too many achievements, too much traveling, and too many players doing things at the same time. It seems to me that there is quite a lot of content, it’s all quite different, and you keep going back to the stuff you like most.

These zone war events do mark the first time that GW2 has put proper battlegrounds into open world zones. Yes, we’d like there to be mass combat tactics that promote individual skill and as soon as an MMO has them we might go there. I’m guessing we’ll be in GW2 for a while longer.

Lianu.1390
Just putting in my support for the OP.
I’ve been rather disenchanted with the latest Living Story due to the mandatory zerg-fest.
In original Guild Wars, there were some really crazy, challenging, and amazing massive fights using only a team of 8 to fend them off. You had to use strategy, change your builds around to manage the 10-to-1 odds, and even use the environment (funnel points, catapults, etc.) to win.

I agree that the “zombie zergs” aren’t my idea of fun. Running around from one group to another, getting in a few hits here and there, hoping you get there in time for Scarlet is only fun if you like action packed-content and don’t care about much else.

In the original Guild Wars game, the Battle for Lion’s Arch is a perfect example of a really epic battle. I had been hoping we’d see something like this at Divinity’s Reach.

Nobody would zerg if it didn’t reward the players as well as it does. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar.

In case it’s not already clear, let’s examine the basic elements of zerg-style gameplay:

-Crowded, sometimes overflowing servers that occasionally block people from experiencing the content

-Abysmal framerates, and waypoints that take forever to load

-No skill whatsoever, unless you consider battling the game’s awful tab targeting a real skill. Framerates are too low and fights are too cluttered and messy to even tell what’s going on (effects LOD does practically nothing btw). I don’t feel like I’m fighting as much as mashing buttons and being carried by 100 other nameless strangers.

-Blind, frantic waypointing, which just feels stupid. Lots of time you’ll show up to an event and everything will be dead by the time the waypoint loads. Furthermore, it discourages actually traveling through the zone and makes the game world feel flat; heaven forbid you should actually have to utilize all the magnificent, beautifully crafted terrain.

-Tagging is the name of the game. Forget that creative build you spent hours theorycrafting because it’s better to just load up your zerker gear and hit things hard.

Read all of the above. Which part sounds like fun? None of them do.

Why? Because none of them mention champ bags.

To clarify, I appreciate the spirit of what Anet is trying to do.

They want large scale battles, and they want to repopulate the mid to mid-high zones of the game. And thematically speaking, I love Scarlet and the Twisted Watchwork enemies.

Unfortunately, the method they use to facilitate all of this is the zerg. If they didn’t feel pressured to push out new content every 2 weeks, they could probably imagine something much better.

Traveller.7496:

What’s the difference between us and Scarlet again?

Thank you for saying what I know is WRONG with this event.

Lemaign.3529:

Nobody would zerg if it didn’t reward the players as well as it does. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar.

In case it’s not already clear, let’s examine the basic elements of zerg-style gameplay:

-Crowded, sometimes overflowing servers that occasionally block people from experiencing the content

-Abysmal framerates, and waypoints that take forever to load

-No skill whatsoever, unless you consider battling the game’s awful tab targeting a real skill. Framerates are too low and fights are too cluttered and messy to even tell what’s going on (effects LOD does practically nothing btw). I don’t feel like I’m fighting as much as mashing buttons and being carried by 100 other nameless strangers.

-Blind, frantic waypointing, which just feels stupid. Lots of time you’ll show up to an event and everything will be dead by the time the waypoint loads. Furthermore, it discourages actually traveling through the zone and makes the game world feel flat; heaven forbid you should actually have to utilize all the magnificent, beautifully crafted terrain.

-Tagging is the name of the game. Forget that creative build you spent hours theorycrafting because it’s better to just load up your zerker gear and hit things hard.

Read all of the above. Which part sounds like fun? None of them do.

Why? Because none of them mention champ bags.

Wtf is this? Common Sense on the forums?

HawkMeister.4758:

So Anet, you decided to make your weakest gameplay, Tha Zerg the new permanent content – seriously?
ATM I´m so disgusted with this “new” content that I´ve decided to take a break after one year of loyally logging in to this game.

Maybe I´ll be back..
Edit:I liked the original thread title “Zerg Wars 2” better, perfectly fitting for what this game has become.

Agreed fully

For all the people who say this isn’t a zerg fest. Yesterday I saw so many people gathered in one place, that I lagged a little when I got close to them. Then, people kept telling, including myself, the two commanders to split. They followed each other around, and as you know, when people see two commanders in one place, this means, they MUST ATTEND ASAP!

Another funny thing is, I saw a pirates event still going on, and a huge number of people were there when the pirates bar was already emptied out a long time ago. They were…. wait for it…. FARMING! That invasion was only successful because there were a number of people doing it the right way.

I’m glad they reduced the number of champions in the last patch. But will that stop people from zerging? We shall see…

the title changed because the thread was merged with another thread

I experienced something different yesterday with the invasions. I joined 10 minutes too late and the new overflow didn’t had the invasion, so I tried my luck guesting, because I needed fireheart rises to complete the meta achievement.
I picked a very low populated server and it was around midnight. 10 minutes in and they were still trying to do the first wave. My first thought (shame on me) was just, meh, they are never going to finish it in time, might as well just gather something for the daily and wait around, because running around in large groups, hopping from one event to the next, was getting too stressful for me, but then I just had to help out.

I discovered that there was only a small zerg, about a dozen players rallying around one commander, asking her/him where they should go next, but I mostly roamed free, trying to close portals with maybe one or two other players, sometimes alone.
And I thought to myself, this is how invasions are supposed to feel. Terrifying and desperate. I on the other hand was coming from a richly populated server, used to winning with ease, a pampered human guardian.

I ran to a portal, I was alone, but I tried anyway, because nobody else was gonna close it. I took two veterans and several smaller adds on, I was overwhelmed with a swarm of twisted creatures, I fled, hearing Scarlets laughter ringing over the map, that yes, I should better run for my life. No, I turned around, tried again, got downed, but was reliefed to see another player coming to my aid. A small asuran thief, she/he used a Shadow refuge, healed me just in time and that was that. We closed the portal and ran to the next one, still the first wave. The next event was behind a hill, but we could already see the big portal looming over it. Never mind all the fireheart rises enemies that wanted to kill us on our way. Behind the hill was one single twisted champion. I only had experience with these champions in a large zerg, hacking away at them and killing them very fast, never in any real danger. I had no idea about their real abilities and we were only two players. Anyway.. the asura was crazy enough to not even hestitate and just attack it. I couldn’t run away, she/he had helped me earlier, too, so I just went with it and started attacking. I used my scepter and focus with my guardian, run around in circles, dodged the firebreath. Sometimes just in time, sometimes.. not. Man, and the champ could hit. For the first time I really saw the complex animations of the twisted champs, but I had no time enjoying them.

It was a close call, but in the end we took him down! As I was cheering and getting my well earned chest, suddenly another champion came out of the portal, right on top of me and he had no patience for my shenaningans, hit me right away. Only then I noticed the Asura had not joined in the cheers, she/he had grabbed the loot fast and had waited at a distance, ready to strike again. Obviously experienced with facing the odds. Guess being on an underdog server does that to you.
We started fighting again. But the champion had not come alone, there were some adds and one veteran, too. I called for help in the map chat. After we had got the champ down to 50% help arrived, two other players. Even with them it took us a while, it required positioning, skills and teamwork. As soon as the champ was down and we had closed the portal, we ran away, scattered.
In the chaos I lost sight of my asuran helper, but I met other players, helped out where I could. There was a sturdy norn warrior facing swarms of twisted horrors alone, we fought side by side. He was a little bit faster running to the next portal, I got left behind, downed. He came back, revived me before I died. Then there was an arrogant necromancer, having a pool of undead creatures around her, wreak havoc to everything in her path. I always saw her in the distance, fighting a lone battle.

We managed to get to the second waves, there were cheers in the mapchat and I had the most fun since the new patch started. I didn’t get much loot besides the two champion chests and the one from the second wave reward, but for the first time I knew exactly where and how I’ve gotten those 3 chests and that was much more precious than the actual loot.

tltr: Just don’t follow the zerg and you get to experience all kinds of epic adventures ^^

Jup, nothing beats doing these champs as 2 or 3 players.