Guild Wars 2

I just got home, and being that I have been excited for toypocalypse beyond belief for a week the first thing I did was jump onto GW2 and get into Toypocalypse.

Only took a couple of seconds to figure out what I needed to do. Was a little peeved that we couldn’t get in as a party(won’t go into that as there seem to be tons of people complaining about it already), but that wasn’t too bad…

I start playing and shortly notice that I am the ONLY person building turrets. I am setting up layered siege at each of the entrances to the platform and running around like crazy keeping it up, and no one is helping. I’m thinking to myself “are these people really that dumb that they can’t figure it out?” And then I look up at the score and realise that they DID figure it out. I have 10 points… TEN. The person in the lead had something like 190 points. You do NOT get awarded ANY credit for actually building turrets and defense. None. Zip. Zilch. You only get awarded credit for killing with weapons.

Think about this for a minute. You put a tower defense game and then give people credit for not building their tower defense… You actually penalize them for doing so.
If you tell your son that he should never lie, but you will give him a dollar every time he lies… Do you really think he will make a habit of telling the truth?

And this takes us back to the party problem. Most of the people complaining actually WANT to play the toypocalypse properly, and the way its been done the only way they would EVER get a chance to do so is if they brought in their own premade.

The solution? Change the point allocation.
I would propose the following:
Building a passive defense(i.e. wall) = 1 point
Building an active defense(i.e. snowman, ballista, catapult) = 2 points
Every time a defense you built gets the killing blow on something you get 1 point(or maybe more than one killing blow per point… whatever is needed to balance it).
Killing with a weapon = 0 points

You have a tower defense game, you need to set up your point structure to reward people who build up their defenses. Right now the point system pretty much guarantees that you will not get a PUG that will actually properly defend their dolyaks.

Welcome to Toypocalypse. Where the points don’t matter, but everyone thinks they do.

Seriously, though, why are you concerned about worthless points? Why is anyone? This explains why no one is competent enough to help get the achievements, they’re worried about useless points.

Well, to my appearance it looks like the peronalized gifts you get scale with points….. I got a LOT more of them when I started using the weapon and racking up points.

Mors Subita.5802:

Well, to my appearance it looks like the peronalized gifts you get scale with points….. I got a LOT more of them when I started using the weapon and racking up points.

And? They give you nothing that regular gifts don’t give, and you get more gifts overall by surviving.

Mors Subita.5802:

Well, to my appearance it looks like the peronalized gifts you get scale with points….. I got a LOT more of them when I started using the weapon and racking up points.

Honestly, OP, if you’re using the Toypocalypse as a way to farm gifts then you’re doing it wrong. It takes too long and the cost (time, effort, skill) to reward (gifts- that’s it) ratio is not very favorable over other activities.

MethodicMockingbird.6520:

Mors Subita.5802:

Well, to my appearance it looks like the peronalized gifts you get scale with points….. I got a LOT more of them when I started using the weapon and racking up points.

Honestly, OP, if you’re using the Toypocalypse as a way to farm gifts then you’re doing it wrong. It takes too long and the cost (time, effort, skill) to reward (gifts- that’s it) ratio is not very favorable over other activities.

I didn’t say I was using them to farm gifts, I said that the points do have an effect…
And even if they didn’t change the number of gifts you got, they would still have a psychological effect. People are ignoring the actual mechanics of the event in favor of racking up points… and since you can’t take in a premade group, you do not have the option of going in with like-minded people.

Whether or not the points give you any material benefit, the fact of the matter is that the point system as currently implemented not only doesn’t support the game model, but actively hinders it.

Edit: and had you read through my original post, I think it is pretty clear that the problem I have is that people are too busy racking up points to actually play the event as it was intended. I tried 6-8 times and didn’t find a single group that was actually stacking defense to try and keep their dolyaks alive.

I haven’t gotten a chance to try out Toypocalypse yet… but sounds a lot like how points are rewarded in WvW and sPvP… ie, they incentivise short sighted people to play poorly.

Why try to win the game and potentially get 10x glory, when you can just stand and cap this one point with the entire team to get a guaranteed 1x glory right now? Why stay on the siege weapons to help ensure the capture of that keep and be lucky if you get a Bronze meddle, when you can just jump off your post and stand in the circle to get a “guaranteed” Gold meddle (you’re less likely to even take the keep in the first place when all your siege operators jump off their posts).

Changes to the point rewards in Toypocalypse can wait until they fix the incentives for WvW and sPvP…. huh…

Mors Subita.5802:

MethodicMockingbird.6520:

Mors Subita.5802:

Well, to my appearance it looks like the peronalized gifts you get scale with points….. I got a LOT more of them when I started using the weapon and racking up points.

Honestly, OP, if you’re using the Toypocalypse as a way to farm gifts then you’re doing it wrong. It takes too long and the cost (time, effort, skill) to reward (gifts- that’s it) ratio is not very favorable over other activities.

I didn’t say I was using them to farm gifts, I said that the points do have an effect…
And even if they didn’t change the number of gifts you got, they would still have a psychological effect. People are ignoring the actual mechanics of the event in favor of racking up points… and since you can’t take in a premade group, you do not have the option of going in with like-minded people.

Whether or not the points give you any material benefit, the fact of the matter is that the point system as currently implemented not only doesn’t support the game model, but actively hinders it.

Edit: and had you read through my original post, I think it is pretty clear that the problem I have is that people are too busy racking up points to actually play the event as it was intended. I tried 6-8 times and didn’t find a single group that was actually stacking defense to try and keep their dolyaks alive.

I know you didn’t say that you were using the activity to farm gifts, I was just inferring it from your posts. And while I do agree that the points don’t really serve much (useful) purpose as currently utilized, I don’t think that they always hinder gameplay. That’s just a generalization, like rationalizing that every X of Y is Z, or works like Z because of K, when, in reality, only a sample of X of Y really work like Z because of K and you just happen to be there to observe it. If you weren’t there to observe it, you wouldn’t be making this point, would you?

lol, when i finished toypocalypse and received the achievement i had 7 or 9 points.. highest amount of points was i think.. 90 ish? or 100 ish? points don’t matter… lol.

itsshortstuff.7148:

lol, when i finished toypocalypse and received the achievement i had 7 or 9 points.. highest amount of points was i think.. 90 ish? or 100 ish? points don’t matter… lol.

Then why are they there in the first place?
That´s just terrible design.

itsshortstuff.7148:

lol, when i finished toypocalypse and received the achievement i had 7 or 9 points.. highest amount of points was i think.. 90 ish? or 100 ish? points don’t matter… lol.

Agreed… the problem is most of the people going in don’t think that way, and they didn’t cater this to the lowest common denominator.

As for what the previous poster was saying about sample size, I know one person who has been hopping games since it went live… and if he is the only person building defense he leaves and joins another… He told me he hasn’t actually stayed through to the end of a single event yet.

Other people have told me similar things… If you got a group that actually understood how to play tower defense, then fantastic for you… But as far as I can tell you are in the minority.

ANet said they won’t be changing it so that you can join as a team, so you will always be hot-joining.

In every game you will have the people who are more interested in being top on the DPS meter than in doing what they are supposed to, or who want the most points rather than doing what they are supposed to, etc… You need to set up the points so that those people actually participate so that the people who want to finish it can do so.

Gigolo Jesus.4519:

itsshortstuff.7148:

lol, when i finished toypocalypse and received the achievement i had 7 or 9 points.. highest amount of points was i think.. 90 ish? or 100 ish? points don’t matter… lol.

Then why are they there in the first place?
That´s just terrible design.

/agree

Ummm…. yeah, the object for me was to get the achievement points. Which means staying alive and keeping the yaks alive too. I didn’t even look at the score once to notice, just kept my eye on the health meters.

Also, being a WvW’er, I went straight to building wall’s and cat’s. Right before any of them were about to be demolished, I’d upgrade them to replenish their health. It was pretty easy for the players I was with. Maybe they just needed someone to follow from the start.

Also, build double walls. Oh… and put a few snowman out in the field as bait :-)

Also, just for MethodicMockingbird… Consider this… If this problem wasn’t real, they wouldn’t be changing the achievement.

They are changing the achievement from “keep all dolyaks alive” to “keep at least 1 dolyak alive”.

Just FYI, everyone…

FINALLY got a group that was working properly, and we managed to keep all 5 dolyaks alive, so I got the achievement.

For all those people saying racking up the points was worthless because you get a better bonus for completing it… the total reward for completing it was 4 personalised bags.