Guild Wars 2

I like to challenge myself and many times I will try to take on a champion mob by myself if I come across it. And most of the reward for me comes in being able to defeat it, however, after kiting a mob for 7 mins and often times only receiving a single blue quality item from the drop, the smile tends to fall off my face.

Here I am just suggesting if a player does 100% of the damage on a champion mob maybe you could up the loot table percentages a little bit!

I think 100% damage wouldn’t work, but what about 100% time invested (from first hit to last hit) or something like that?

+ I would love to see scaling working, so that enemies stay equally difficult, no matter how many players participating. This way the OP and people like him would have their challenge and would never feel griefed. Personally I feel a bit frustrated, when I start a difficult battle for the challenge and suddenly a group of 5 comes along (after 7min fighting the beast) and destroys the mob in seconds.

Guild Wars 2 encourages grouping up. I think adding that kind of mechanic would be going against that philosophy. As it stands now grouping up with players doesn’t negatively effect you.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

If a second player runs up and hits the champion once while you’re fighting it, does that mean you’ve griefed?

I think the main idea is to encurage players to start figting a mob, even without other players around you. People tend to run away from groupe events on the map instead of piling up, fearing that no other players will appear and they’ll have to face them selfs the dificult content.
I suggest you very sligtly increase the reward when a content is acomplised by fewer than suggested players (beter chances in drops), and give soloers a very small chance to drop “a medal” that can ether be worn for cosmetic reasons or sold for 10 silver to a vendor.
I believe the “one person droped a hit and go away” problem can easilly be fixed by making the system check who has done 90% of the work.

This suggestion is not the best solution in the “runing away from group events” problem. But at this point anything will do.

Personally I suggest to put some beter rewards on groupe events (chance to drop something rare), and have the champion mob starting the fight softly, and hit hard only once it gets bellow 90% of it’s health.

Kite.2510:

I suggest you very sligtly increase the reward when a content is acomplised by fewer than suggested players (beter chances in drops), and give soloers a very small chance to drop “a medal” that can ether be worn for cosmetic reasons or sold for 10 silver to a vendor.
I believe the “one person droped a hit and go away” problem can easilly be fixed by making the system check who has done 90% of the work.

you would feel griefed by a group of 10 guys running by and destroying the mobs 80% of health in seconds. They took your chance of better loot.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

If a second player runs up and hits the champion once while you’re fighting it, does that mean you’ve griefed?

No no no, I welcome people to come help me take it down! The problem is almost no one ever does… I don’t think they think it is rewarding enough to help so I end up spend anywhere from 7 to 20 mins killing one mob on something that should be killed in just a couple.

Like the guy above me said I think it could be fixed by offering a better incentive to kill these mobs populating Tyria.

Is there a reason why champions mainly drop blues or junk in the first place? Outside of event bosses, these are supposed to be the most difficult mobs in open world PvE, yet the reward from normal non-champion mobs is often better.

As for the damage, mark it as 90% of damage from one source counts as soloing it, or allocate it dynamically. That being said, this wouldn’t be required if the loot drops were more worthwhile.

Kite.2510:

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

If a second player runs up and hits the champion once while you’re fighting it, does that mean you’ve griefed?

I think the main idea is to encurage players to start figting a mob, even without other players around you. People tend to run away from groupe events on the map instead of piling up, fearing that no other players will appear and they’ll have to face them selfs the dificult content.
I suggest you very sligtly increase the reward when a content is acomplised by fewer than suggested players (beter chances in drops), and give soloers a very small chance to drop “a medal” that can ether be worn for cosmetic reasons or sold for 10 silver to a vendor.
I believe the “one person droped a hit and go away” problem can easilly be fixed by making the system check who has done 90% of the work.

This suggestion is not the best solution in the “runing away from group events” problem. But at this point anything will do.

Personally I suggest to put some beter rewards on groupe events (chance to drop something rare), and have the champion mob starting the fight softly, and hit hard only once it gets bellow 90% of it’s health.

Before they attempt any of that they need to fix the system for checking “90% of the work” there is more to fighting than just dealing damage. Buffs/deduffs/CC/etc. can drastically alter the outcome of fight.

Khisanth.2948:

Kite.2510:

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

If a second player runs up and hits the champion once while you’re fighting it, does that mean you’ve griefed?

I think the main idea is to encurage players to start figting a mob, even without other players around you. People tend to run away from groupe events on the map instead of piling up, fearing that no other players will appear and they’ll have to face them selfs the dificult content.
I suggest you very sligtly increase the reward when a content is acomplised by fewer than suggested players (beter chances in drops), and give soloers a very small chance to drop “a medal” that can ether be worn for cosmetic reasons or sold for 10 silver to a vendor.
I believe the “one person droped a hit and go away” problem can easilly be fixed by making the system check who has done 90% of the work.

This suggestion is not the best solution in the “runing away from group events” problem. But at this point anything will do.

Personally I suggest to put some beter rewards on groupe events (chance to drop something rare), and have the champion mob starting the fight softly, and hit hard only once it gets bellow 90% of it’s health.

Before they attempt any of that they need to fix the system for checking “90% of the work” there is more to fighting than just dealing damage. Buffs/deduffs/CC/etc. can drastically alter the outcome of fight.

Then how do you balance contribution among healers, cc’ers and dpsers?

You can’t.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

If a second player runs up and hits the champion once while you’re fighting it, does that mean you’ve griefed?

I honestly would pull up a lawn chair and watch instead. Just to see their chat dialogue after beating it and seeing what it drops. XD

3 Things for champions should be done IMHO.

1. VERY LONG respawn rate. They should feel more unique than a spammable enemy (if you got a group they go down fairly quick)

2. Longer respawn rate, so better chances at good loot. Not necessarily exotics, but a high chance of rare loot, moderatly better chance of a exotic Possibly make a new skin for some of them and the skin is only obtainable from that champion with a very small drop chance. Show it off in town and be like “yeah, I slayed the Champion Devourer queen and got a crystal staff, what have you done today?” Oh you wasted 600g on a weapon half of Tyria already has <.<

3. Make them drop account bound crafting components towards some legendaries. Stray away from the aweful grind of making a legendary and focus more on a ridiculous scavenger hunt. If people were told "A Champion in Maguuma Jungle region drops X material towards the Legendary weapon, “____”. Now you got a ton of people scanning over the entire region looking for a champion that has a slim chance to drop a material they need.

Some may say, "well now you’re asking players to waste time camping a champion and some players simply won’t have the time to get that champion due to work, kids, life, etc. Legendaries are a cosmetic, not a stat bonus. Not to mention, since participating in killing a mob grants loot to all the players who did enough damage to it, you can’t “steal” the champion from them. I’d much rather have a hunt to find a specific champion for an item and enjoy killing this hard open world boss than spend my days grinding for materials or playing the market for coin..

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

If a second player runs up and hits the champion once while you’re fighting it, does that mean you’ve been griefed?

That was my first thought when I saw the title.

NickDollahZ.5348:

Guild Wars 2 encourages grouping up. I think adding that kind of mechanic would be going against that philosophy. As it stands now grouping up with players doesn’t negatively effect you.

GW2 doesn’t actually encourage grouping up. It encourages a zerg of players DPSing with no rhyme, reason or structure against a boss with a ridiculous health pool. No mental effort, strategy, or tactics are usually required. There is no group integrity as all roles are very homogenized and indistinct given how character attributes and the skill system operates. In dungeons, yes, the game mechanically encourages grouping, but there’s little to no depth in the group-combat system. It all deteriorates to very boring zerg tactics because the skills, traits, and roles aren’t integral to success against encounters. This is partly due to the fact that mob AI is awful, mobs don’t have player-available skills (like in GW1) to create systemic depth, and also due to how poorly skills and traits are designed.

NickDollahZ.5348:

Guild Wars 2 encourages grouping up. I think adding that kind of mechanic would be going against that philosophy. As it stands now grouping up with players doesn’t negatively effect you.

If so, then there wouldn’t be any mature karka in Southsun Cove. Instead, everybody avoid them and I can’t think anything other about mature karka than boring moving nuisance. Even in group, they give stupid drop making noone wants to invest effort killing them. Only one mature karka is killed from time to time due to rich orri node, but most of the time is avoided and kited.

The reward for soloing a champion is that you’re soloing a champion. The accomplishment is plenty, because the gratification is purely a feat – despite or perhaps because it doesn’t change anything about the physical reward.

Do it because you want to do it, not because the developers catered to the idea. It’s supposed to be a group thing anyway.

Some classes got easier to solo Champions then others, so NO

Truth be told I would like to see such idea implemented but as most people pointed out it is nigh impossible to incorporate it into current system while making it fair for everyone. Better is the enemy of the good in that case. Although small exp bonus for no other players in area may be it.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

If a second player runs up and hits the champion once while you’re fighting it, does that mean you’ve been griefed?

No, getting a blue (or nothing) for several minutes invested in fighting a tough opponent however might.
Effort vs reward is currently seriously out of balance, and should be looked into. This is not only about things like killing the champions and veterans (by the way, the drop update for them that was in patch notes some time ago still seems to be broken), but also all the non-dps conributions, like buffing, healing, pulling and tanking.

This thread depresses me.

Coming from WOW, Rift, LOTRO (among others) GW2 is a breath of fresh air, no competition for mobs, no ‘camping’ due to horrendously long respawn times, no arguments over who did 90% damage and should therefore get a higher proportion of mobs drops, etc. Who cares if someone strikes ‘your mob’, there is no kill stealing to worry about?

Now, many in this thread are asking for GW2 to become a game just like those, full of selfish people who view everyone else as competition.

And Astralporing is one who seems to want to open the Pandora’s box of “who contributed” to a kill: please don’t, this game is far, far better for none of this “I did more than him” nonsense, LOTRO is awash with that sort of rubbish post-‘Open Tapping’.

Why? Why, people? Why do you want GW2 to descend to the depths of WOW when it comes to ‘community spirit’?

I’m against the idea, as to me this will lead to what ANet just said. GW2 is a coop game, and so any help is welcomed. If you have higher reward for being alone, then you’ll yell at people helping you. Or if the higher reward is for starting the champion alone, then this will be abused: with 10 friends, you’ll go first, alone, and then your friends will come.

To me, defeating a champion alone is a reward in itself. Last day I defeated a champion with another warrior, we were only two, and I was happy, don’t need a higher reward, just the pleasure to have done it is enough…

@Kraggy.4169 giving some nice rewards for effort is not turning GW2 into WoW or LOTRO. Right now, people won’t do anything after they got from their desired dungeons. Newcomers have hard time to find party for story mode. Hell, I play this from BWE3 and I didn’t do story mode on all my 80 toons of which, 2 toons have no story mode on any dungeon. Why? The same reason others don’t do it – not rewarding. Downside is – people help newcomers only if they are bored to death.

@hithlain.4385 Seems like most people find defeating champions not rewarding. Mature karka roam and roam while players avoid using tricks to evade their attacks. Have in mind this game is MMO and first M is very important. Right now, masses don’t like reward system when compared to effort invested.

Kraggy.4169:

And Astralporing is one who seems to want to open the Pandora’s box of “who contributed” to a kill: please don’t, this game is far, far better for none of this “I did more than him” nonsense, LOTRO is awash with that sort of rubbish post-‘Open Tapping’.

I’m pretty sure that you misunderstood what i was trying to say. I disagree completely with OP’s solution to the problem – cooperation should be encouraged. That’s why i think that those that contribute in ways different than pure dps should be also compensated. Not more, not less – equally.
And the problem is not that the reward is subpar when soloing a champion – it’s that it’s subpar in general. Killing champs is just not worth it – be it for one or 20 players.

I think the reward from killing champions is about right.

And I totally disagree with any notion of getting greater rewards for soloing a champion mob. It’s an mmo isn’t it? Community involvement should be fostered wherever and whenever possible.

It’s pretty clear in this game (at least it should be to everyone) that if you’re going into any fight with the hope of ‘loot’ you’re sorely mistaken about how the mechanics seem to work. ‘Good loot’ drops very rarely. It should be seen as a nice bonus and not expected in any way. I can’t see how this is so hard to understand.

It should be expected when killing a champ. It is really sad when a risen chicken gives me a rare and a champ gives blue and below or nothing. You should have a higher chance of something better dropping from killing a champ.

I disagree. I may be wrong but, increased loot on champ will only lead to one thing: champ farming. And I think that ANet wants to avoid that. They prefer that you go hunt about anywhere on the map than farming champs…

Kraggy.4169:

This thread depresses me.

Coming from WOW, Rift, LOTRO (among others) GW2 is a breath of fresh air, no competition for mobs, no ‘camping’ due to horrendously long respawn times, no arguments over who did 90% damage and should therefore get a higher proportion of mobs drops, etc. Who cares if someone strikes ‘your mob’, there is no kill stealing to worry about?

Now, many in this thread are asking for GW2 to become a game just like those, full of selfish people who view everyone else as competition.

And Astralporing is one who seems to want to open the Pandora’s box of “who contributed” to a kill: please don’t, this game is far, far better for none of this “I did more than him” nonsense, LOTRO is awash with that sort of rubbish post-‘Open Tapping’.

Why? Why, people? Why do you want GW2 to descend to the depths of WOW when it comes to ‘community spirit’?

/signed

Open tapping in LOTRO was best thing that they did for the game since launch (along with auto loot – something that DEFINATELY has to come to WvW) and im happy that they applied it to whole game now.

And, just for a reference – “zerg” IS a group, if you missuse or have some different definition for “group” than established and accepted one…well…it doesnt really matter.
You are still forced into groups in dungeons, so you do have your group exclusive content, please leave Open world as varied as possible so anyone can enjoy content without being forced into anything.

What you suggest discourages grouping / helping other players and goes against the design philosophy of the game.
I love how everybody in GW2 gets rewards for contributing which eliminated kill stealing / griefing etc.
It was more or less like than in GW1, you was sharing the loot / monetary gain with your party so it was most profitable to run with as little people you were able to complete it with. GW2 system is like the opposite of it.
I understand your PoV because in other mmo’s with a first comes first serves basis for tapping you get full loot which might be good on tougher bosses that have a chance of good drops, but actually I prefer how it works in GW2 and don’t see your suggestion as improving on the system already in place.
But it would be good if champions were given a better chance of a good drop overall compared to a normal mob.

The problem of soloing champions is not the loot. Is the LOW population that most maps has today. In most of the low and mid level maps I can play for more than half an hour without seeing NOBODY and NOBODY talking on map. And even if you call for help on map chat you can have NO answer.

The best way to solve this problem is UNDERFLOW SERVERS. When a map is below a population point you can choose to stay on this map or be redirected for a underflow, just like LA overflow. They can even use the overflow servers to do this, the overflow servers have a very low population on theri PvE content.

Edit: complementing the idea. If you have more population on those maps, you will have more chances to have more people killing the champ for fun or for chance of rewards (I really wanna see those people playing ragnarok online… 0,01% of chance to get a equip from a monster that spawn once a day)

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

If a second player runs up and hits the champion once while you’re fighting it, does that mean you’ve been griefed?

Bam! /end of thread

Oh, no, no.

If there was better rewards for doing that, then you’ll get payers kittening when you help them with a champion.

And something that increases the population of an area is not something you can make 100% sure.

What champions need is something to make it worthwhile to take the time and effort to kill them at least once EVEN if you are alone.

@Mithran
You never can be sure OF NOTHING, you can fear to die in an airplane and never fly on one, then one day one just fall in your head…

But increasing population will increase the chances of getting more people to help you doing something much more chances than having NO ONE in the map.

evolverzilla.2359:

The problem of soloing champions is not the loot. Is the LOW population that most maps has today. In most of the low and mid level maps I can play for more than half an hour without seeing NOBODY and NOBODY talking on map. And even if you call for help on map chat you can have NO answer.

The best way to solve this problem is UNDERFLOW SERVERS. When a map is below a population point you can choose to stay on this map or be redirected for a underflow, just like LA overflow. They can even use the overflow servers to do this, the overflow servers have a very low population on theri PvE content.

Edit: complementing the idea. If you have more population on those maps, you will have more chances to have more people killing the champ for fun or for chance of rewards (I really wanna see those people playing ragnarok online… 0,01% of chance to get a equip from a monster that spawn once a day)

Agree with this. This is MMO and I should bump often to other players. Right now it looking more and more to single player experience. I might return to Skyrim or something.

Don’t get me wrong, sometimes I like to solo things but not all the time. Even when I do, I like to see some players doing something else on the map. Or to read on map chat some of their ideas and conversations – might be useful or planing some dungeon…

Still, I think increasing rewards from champs could make players want to stick to certain maps. It doesn’t have to be something you will have as a gear, but to be valuable. Like rare materials and bunch of junk you can sell to NPC for more money. Right now, we can spend a lot of time fighting a champ and earn like 2 silver. If we spend 30 minutes fighting champ, we should get 30 silver at least. That champ can have long cooldown so players go somewhere else for other things or other champs. This might be as a pilgrimage route but is is still better than what we have now.

Khisanth.2948:

Kite.2510:

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

If a second player runs up and hits the champion once while you’re fighting it, does that mean you’ve griefed?

I think the main idea is to encurage players to start figting a mob, even without other players around you. People tend to run away from groupe events on the map instead of piling up, fearing that no other players will appear and they’ll have to face them selfs the dificult content.
I suggest you very sligtly increase the reward when a content is acomplised by fewer than suggested players (beter chances in drops), and give soloers a very small chance to drop “a medal” that can ether be worn for cosmetic reasons or sold for 10 silver to a vendor.
I believe the “one person droped a hit and go away” problem can easilly be fixed by making the system check who has done 90% of the work.

This suggestion is not the best solution in the “runing away from group events” problem. But at this point anything will do.

Personally I suggest to put some beter rewards on groupe events (chance to drop something rare), and have the champion mob starting the fight softly, and hit hard only once it gets bellow 90% of it’s health.

Before they attempt any of that they need to fix the system for checking “90% of the work” there is more to fighting than just dealing damage. Buffs/deduffs/CC/etc. can drastically alter the outcome of fight.

Couldnt agree more, I tend to spend a lot of time buffing, healing (Elementalist water skills) or rezzing players. Id feel pretty pathetic if I just ignored other players because I want to get gold status. But most the time I get silvers just because I want to do what is right and help the group !

I don´t remember where I see this, but some developer said about better drops on most disputed mobs. Correct me if I´m wrong about this (not my poor english). So increasing the population on maps can give you better drops and the chance to party and get even better drops.

Kraggy.4169:

This thread depresses me.

Coming from WOW, Rift, LOTRO (among others) GW2 is a breath of fresh air, no competition for mobs, no ‘camping’ due to horrendously long respawn times, no arguments over who did 90% damage and should therefore get a higher proportion of mobs drops, etc. Who cares if someone strikes ‘your mob’, there is no kill stealing to worry about?

Now, many in this thread are asking for GW2 to become a game just like those, full of selfish people who view everyone else as competition.

And Astralporing is one who seems to want to open the Pandora’s box of “who contributed” to a kill: please don’t, this game is far, far better for none of this “I did more than him” nonsense, LOTRO is awash with that sort of rubbish post-‘Open Tapping’.

Why? Why, people? Why do you want GW2 to descend to the depths of WOW when it comes to ‘community spirit’?

I suggested no such thing ^^ Technically a champion would be “camped” but since loot is shared across all who participated killing it the item people are looking for won’t be a small chance for a select few who claimed it. It would be a small chance for an item for everyone.

Personally, I think time in combat (as in attacking it atleast once every 5 or so seconds) should be counted towards loot instead of damage. Some professions have access to much stronger AoE’s than others and when they wipe everything out, the others are left without any loot. Sure they did more damage than the others but its not like they had a chance to begin with. (I can say sb on my thief I can kill groups of trash mobs very quickly before some party members can even slash it twice.)

Imo veterans should drop at least a blue and champions at least a green item if they existed in the world for a certain time (like with bonus XP, to prevent camping). Exploring a cave, finding and killing an “old” veteran or champion because nobody went there for some time and not getting anything at all really is a bit disappointing and doesn’t encourage exploring.
It may just be problem that some champions are really easy to solo, it just takes some time to bring down their health, while others are pretty hard or impossible, depending on which class you play.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

If a second player runs up and hits the champion once while you’re fighting it, does that mean you’ve been griefed?

Actually, if a bunch of players show up and scale up the boss fight, but barely participate, does that mean you’ve been griefed?
I think it does, even if involuntarily.
The risk of dying to one-hit attacks if high, in this game, and with it comes repair and waypoint costs, wich some players try to avoid by the plague even if it means playing overly safe.

Still, I think the main issue here is the Time vs Risk vs Reward throughout the game.

When there are too many players, even if the enemy scales up, it usually goes down faster, granted they participate.
On the other hand, when there are too few players, the difficulty doesn’t scale down below the recommended amount of players, wich is understandable, since we don’t want bosses to feel like regular veterans.

The solution, in my opinion, is to also scale the reward up with both the:

• Number of players below the recommended
  If the recommended for a challenge is 5, it should scale the reward up as the number of players goes down from 4 towards 1.
• Personal Contribution
  To answer your question, if a player does 99% of the work, and someone joins in to give the boss a hit, it wouldn’t suddenly scale down drops from 1 to 2 players.
  From 2 players, it’s expected 50%-50% performance.
  If both players have 50-50 performance, they should each get drops as if there were 2 players.
  However, if player A does 90% and player B does 10%, then A did 180% of the expected and B did 20%, so A gets 180% of the drops for 2 players, and B gets 20%.
  Something like this would work wonders.
  This would not influence the Event rewards, as those only require a minimum contribution, wich is fine.
• Time invested
  Increase reward as time goes on, to compensate the effort and patience, since a long boss fight is often due to being undergeared, etc.

Currently, it’s way too effective to play glass cannon builds because they make fights that much faster, and faster fights means faster income.

Masharok.9428:

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

If a second player runs up and hits the champion once while you’re fighting it, does that mean you’ve griefed?

No no no, I welcome people to come help me take it down! The problem is almost no one ever does… I don’t think they think it is rewarding enough to help so I end up spend anywhere from 7 to 20 mins killing one mob on something that should be killed in just a couple.

For me, it’s not so much a matter of loot (can’t remember when I last got some loot from a champion that wasn’t white or gray), but rather the time investment. I don’t want to spend 10 minutes only killing one foe. I want to roam! Sometimes I’ll tackle a champion when there’s already somebody else fighting it, but at those times I simply want the excitement of fighting a foe who can one-shot me without problems, and keeping the other(s) also fighting him, on their feet. You usually need more tactics if you go against a champion with only a few people. But usually, I’m lazy and ignore him…

Gee. And here I thought players would be happy that other players were unable to come in and take kills (and therefore loot) from them.

Oh well. Kids today.

Nurvus.2891:

The solution, in my opinion, is to also scale the reward up with both the:

• Personal Contribution
  To answer your question, if a player does 99% of the work, and someone joins in to give the boss a hit, it wouldn’t suddenly scale down drops from 1 to 2 players.
  From 2 players, it’s expected 50%-50% performance.
  If both players have 50-50 performance, they should each get drops as if there were 2 players.
  However, if player A does 90% and player B does 10%, then A did 180% of the expected and B did 20%, so A gets 180% of the drops for 2 players, and B gets 20%.
  Something like this would work wonders.
  This would not influence the Event rewards, as those only require a minimum contribution, wich is fine.
• Time invested
  Increase reward as time goes on, to compensate the effort and patience, since a long boss fight is often due to being undergeared, etc.

Those metrics are flawed though. What about different builds and classes, their damage output is very different. What does contribution mean anyway? Damage only? How do you measure support? A bad player or a class with low damage output will be rewarded for soloing even if it as a walk in the park, just because it took longer? What about kiting to make the fight last longer?

I never said anything about damage.
Contribution includes Boons, Conditions, Healing, damage, etc – everything counts.

The reason you get the same reward regardless of how many people attacked your target is to encourage cooperation. Better loot for soloing things would encourage bots and discourage cooperation.