A while ago, it was very hard to get gold participation in large dynamic events with lots of ppl around (like the shatterer). this seems to have been addressed, and for that, I express my appreciation.
however, similar problem still exist in other dynamic events in a different form. I was doing temple of balthazar today, and as I escorted the pact toward the temple, multiple veteran undead spawns. I fought them as hard as i can but received NO exp reward when the veteran enemy dies. This happened for every veteran i came accross during the event. I suspect this is due to other players dealing massive damage to the enemy whereas my damage wasn’t quite high enough to keep up, but a player should not be punished for not having enough damage. my contribution should still be recognized because i was fighting that enemy from the start to end. (and if i were to solo a veteran enemy, i would be able to do so.. just takes a bit longer than others, so I was by no means trying to get free exp. i’m lvl 80 btw, so it’s not a lvl problem either.)
there’s also the issue with mobs walking into stacks of AOE circles layed by other players and dying almost instantly, causing some other players with less AOE skills to be unable to get credit for their contribution. mesmer suffers the most from this issue.
as a result of the above 2 issues, I received only a bronze participation for the escort even though i was present at the event from the very beginning to the end and actively fighting.
the current system creates competition between players instead of promoting cooperation. every one is competing against each other because only the ones dealing enough damage will receive credit for the fight. this, i believe, goes against guild wars 2’s design philosophy.
Another design issue is with the way monster aggro is handled. some enemies (especially champion monsters) have the tendency to stick to a single players, refusing to change target no matter what. it’s impossible for that player to shake off the aggro. this may be a good thing if the targeted player has a survival build, but if the targeted player cannot tank up the attack, what ends up happening is that the monster will force the targeted player to burn through all their survival skills…. and when all those skills are on cd, that player is pretty much dead (the monster still won’t change target when the player is downed.). sometimes, those monsters hit very hard so there’s virtually no chance for that target player to rally if downed.
this happened to me once, and no matter what i do the monster refuse to change target. it is simply annoying…… and I hope the solution to this will not be “you have to use a survival build”.. because that basically says all other builds are not viable since you never know when you’ll be picked on. a full damage build should have some ways to handle this kind of situation, but with the current target-locked aggro, the only solution I see is for that player to leave the combat zone to disengage the combat (and at that point, i’m not sure if the monster will change target or lose aggro and heal back to full health…… haven’t got a chance to test that, but if it’s the latter…….. you can imagine how frustrated players will be).
and there’s the waypoint cost issue. a lot of regions requires jumping during exploration. if a player accidentally falls to death, he/she should not be punished for trying by requiring him/her to pay for the way point fee. waiting aroud for others to come by for a rez should not be a solution here becasue some regions have very few players and it can take hours before another player comes accross the same region.
also, because of the waypoint cost, when I did temple of balthazar today, there are a ton of defeated players refusing to waypoint back, so we basically have half of the ppl there lying on the ground dead. with the crazy damage that priest has, it’s impossible to rez them one by one. the ppl attempting the rescue usually end up dying as well. as a result, we lost that battle because those players refuse to wayponit then run back to fight…… and we simply did not have enough damage to kill the priest with more than 2/3 of the ppl dead.
If the wayponit cost is lower than it’s current cost, I’d imagine more ppl will be willing to wp back, and thus, make the fight more manageable and enjoyable instead of constantly asking dead players to wp.