Guild Wars 2

The whole zone imo is a huge disappointment in terms of dynamic events.

When you first enter the zone (that’s to be taken literally – as you’re the first player there), you have a steady progression with events through the zone…

… but once those events are done, the zone becomes horribly boring.

The zone has three big event chains:
1) Unlocking Arah Entrance
2) Unlocking Temple of Grenth
3) Unlocking Temple of Melandu

And here is the big flaw – Those three big chains are replaced by single “defend waypoint X”-events. That’s it. Further those events are on a very low respawn timer.

For the Arah-chain: People want the entrance to stay open, so the biggest chain is replaced by simple defend events on each waypoint. Guess what all people are doing in the zone? Jumping between Jofast, Penitent and Shelter’s Gate for the defend events.

For the Temples: Well, while there are defend events, they have no reward. Don’t defend them, let the chain reset for the chest.
Waypoints? Temple of Grenth it so off-road, that the waypoint there is pointless. Temple of Melandu is in the middle of five Waypoints, making that waypoint completely unneeded. Don’t defend here, let the priests retake.

Then there is the southern area around the ship – while there are a few events going on down there, there is no single waypoint in this region. The travel time is too long to even get there.

Then there are some champion events – If you’re wasting time on them, you’re doing it wrong. Champions do not give any additional rewards, you just stand there and afk shoot on them for 5 to 10 minutes because the only “dangerous” thing about them is their HP bar.

I’d like to see the Orr area zones to be more like a war zone. Have all the events kick off at once so defending each area is very difficult. If players keep winning then the difficulty keeps going up.

Games are meant to be fun.

This zone is fun. If you don’t care about fun, “you’re doing it wrong”.

Alarox.4590:

This zone is fun.

Many arguments you bring on “why this zone is fun”…

While i explained why this zone is not fun.

sadly I have to agree that Cursed Shore is rather disappointing. most of the point is already stated by the OP, but to re-initiate:

- weird WP placement: the Grenth temple’s WP is sad, lonely and useless. Since if there is an event there, it becomes contested. It’s especailly bad when the Pact is not in control of the corridor since i have to run a gunglet of fast moving mobs that’s 9/10 I wouldn’t make it, either die trying to run pass them, or fight them and see the event is already finished by the time I reach there.

- The area south has no WP and they covered like 1/3 of the entire map. The only occassional people down there are those doing the SP and POI.

- Group boss events need more love: as in getting people to do them. I think right now most player make the case of “avoid” these event altogether. For example there is a boss right next to the entry camp in cursed shore, and you can’t miss it. But for the past 3 days or so everytime I’m there, I see it, with no one bother to take a look.

I like the Malechor area a lot more since it’s bigger, more fluid and dynamic, but there are few players now since everyone seem to concentrate in Cursed shore for the easy zerg . 90% Cursed Shore is about defending a set of 3 camp WPs. I saw some players report today that there seem to be a diminishing in return so it seem Arenanet is aware of the problem, hope they come up with a good fix soon.

Arciel.9650:

- Group boss events need more love: as in getting people to do them.

People don’t do them because:
- They take a long time to kill for no additional reward
- They don’t have any special abilities. Combining that with a huge HP bar and you end up with a very boring fight that takes a very long time.

Arciel.9650:

For example there is a boss right next to the entry camp in cursed shore, and you can’t miss it

That guy bugs out so often that at least on my server we started to ignore him.

And to comment on the defend event – and what makes them extremely broken:

For Shelter’s Gate and Jofast Waypoint – the mobs run on their preset path. Before they even bother attacking players, they have to reach a checkpoint at the camp. Yet they are killed by the zerg even before reaching that point.
For Penitent – At least here the mobs have invulerability until they reach the camp, but the preloaded AoE kills them instantly. Yet here the most people die, thanks to the killer Risen-Chickens.

Simultaneous attacks are probably a good idea. At the very least, repeated defend events need to scale up in difficulty so that the bot brigades get dislodged every once in awhile.

It was definitely more fun early on (or after a server reset) to do the running invasion events chains that roamed the map over just repeatedly defending the same points over and over. Basically Anet needs to put the “dynamic” back in “Dynamic Events”.

I’d agree, the WP are very strange, and getting down to fight rotbeard and the big shark is quite a pain its always more practical to just farm by running between the 3 Pact Camps, everything else just seems so far off away from each other.

But I can’t comment too much on Melandru as I’ve never done it since it’s been bugged on Gates of Madness for about a week now….

Maybe mix up all the events so they are similair to the retake the temple events. Have a big boss mob as part of more of the events so that it’s worthwhile to defend rather than an incentive to fail to get the chest again. Make the defence event harder than the capture event so it’s worth doing, but challenging to complete so that the temple will eventually be lost. Currently the only hard thing about defend events is finding a way to contribute before the mob annihilates everything.

Weird, I like Cursed Shore above all others.

There were tons of place to explore. I let the resource nodes guide me and accidentally get myself lost everywhere. It is probably you, you are forcing yourself to grind the game.

I had amazing adventures in Cursed Shores, I went into the Labyrinth and I met two people. One person asked for my help in ressing his dead friend. I helped him, but I met the thing that killed her. It was a veteran Risen giant. I helped res the dead friend and then all three of us fought the giant back and it was epic. It was like in the movies where you are cornered and had to shoot away.

There was ten undergeared players including me that wanted to go into the Arah Dungeon. We all banded together and had a warzone in front of the Arah Dungeon. We finally made it to the end but found out that it was locked because of a bug. Still I was satisfied with this warzone experience.

The point is, immerse yourself instead of grinding DE. This is a game, not a job. You don’t need to do Dynamic Events just to gain 1 silver. In fact, I think the rewards of Dynamic Events are terrible. You are better off killing every Risen in your path for tons of blue gear. One blue gear is worth roughly half of a Dynamic Event reward. I like to think of Dynamic Event as something to help NPC with when I am around to help.

people seem to think that grinding lvl 80 DE’s is the way to go…couldnt disagree more. ive yet to make it to Orr, so we’ll see.

I agree, It would be fixed by the suggestion on other topic about difficulty scaling over time. If events would get hard and harder the longer they are win, to the point where wining is just not possible it would fix problems.
After loosing first event, the event would start pushing to ultimate failure state, and at this point difficulty would start degrading over time.

To the above. It’s not even about grinding events. It’s about there is no events. Because few events do not fail, which means other events do no trigger. It just take off all the invasion feeling in zone. There is no invasion there is simple defense in three points over map.

runeblade.7514:

There was ten undergeared players including me that wanted to go into the Arah Dungeon. We all banded together and had a warzone in front of the Arah Dungeon. We finally made it to the end but found out that it was locked because of a bug. Still I was satisfied with this warzone experience.

Did you even read what i wrote about this chain?

It’s cleared early in the morning – and does not reset until a server restart. Once it’s cleared, the fun part is gone. What’s left is to defend your waypoints against the same (not even attacking) enemies.

Do you know how many (new) people enter the zone each day and ask “any events?” on which nobody answers?

I had amazing adventures in Cursed Shores, I went into the Labyrinth and I met two people.

I also went in the labyrinth… met a bugged skillpoint, but found a lovely tree at the end which i decided to cut, on which a champion-group event triggered.

In fact, I think the rewards of Dynamic Events are terrible. You are better off killing every Risen in your path for tons of blue gear.

There is no difference in loot between the dynamic events and the mobs on the path. The real difference is:
- Dynamic Events spawn way more mobs than you encounter solo
- Dynamic Event mobs die way faster due to the player number present (this is good and bad – if you’re lacking any good instant AoE spell to tag the mobs, you won’t get loot and xp)

people seem to think that grinding lvl 80 DE’s is the way to go

I’ve actually be trying to get a group for CoE explorer mode for severeal days…

… but nobody enters – why? All guardians and Warriors want their greatsword-legendary. For that they have to go AC(which is the easiest EM), followed by Twilight Arbor for Onyx Lodestones.
CoE on the other hand is already very hard in SM, and the EM is no different. Add in the bad distribution for the Legendary Weapon Tokens (as in – the most wanted legendary is obtained doing the easiest instance)

Completely agree with points in the OP, as well as have my own complaints with all the Orr zones in general, but Shore is the worst far as DEs go. After seeing the horde of ‘pro’ farmers camped out at Penitent/Shelter Camps on my server I decided to try a couple of the medium pop ones. Lo and behold it seems either your server completely owns everything or nothing but Penitent/Shelter!

its been a few days since i even found the last big event in Orr! Mostly i see broken events in the high level zones which makes lvl 80 PVE really boring.
Is that a server problem rather than a general one? I am on Desolation.

Cayenne.5341:

its been a few days since i even found the last big event in Orr! Mostly i see broken events in the high level zones which makes lvl 80 PVE really boring.
Is that a server problem rather than a general one? I am on Desolation.

I think it’s more due to the fact that during BWE they only gave us a few areas to test, that’s why you see the starting area’s so well done and the end game zones have sometimes half the DE’s broken.

So far the most disappointing zones, for me, have been Straits of Devastation and Cursed Shore.

I have 100% exploration each of them (and done the jumping puzzles), but I have yet to see anything “epic” happen in Cursed Shore. The events that spawn there have all been the simple 1-shotters (not part of any lengthy chain as far as I can tell).

Overall I have the impression that the zone is very “meh”.

Straits of Devastation seems like it has some pretty cool events, but I have never seen Balthazar. I’ve seen people talk about him being up, and then later complain about the wipe in the fight, but usually one of the events leading up to him is bugged and the series simply can’t progress to him. The NPCs marching to his altar were bugged for 2 days in a row (Pact morale was not changing, and the NPCs were standing about 2/3 along their path and not moving), and prior to that the northern group event was bugged for 2 days (something to do with the step where they enter the water simply not working – not sure).

Zones I remember doing fun, sometimes epic-feeling events and event chains are:

Queensdale, Gendarrarn, Blazeridge (the first time – now it’s so overpopulated the big event is over so fast), Sparkfly, Mount Maelstrom and Frostgorge.

But Orr – not so much. I can’t really speak for Leap because, honestly, once I 100% Straits, I simply ran through it to get to Cursed Shore (thinking there’d be a bit more Orichalum than there is). In my run through of Leap, though, 2 temple events were bugged. So I’m guessing it’s like Straits and Cursed in that regard.

One other pretty big issue I’ve come across – mostly in Straits – is that it’s never very easy to actually get to an event that’s happening, even if you have the waypoint, because the waypoints are always contested, and the maps are, quite often, mazes.

With so many events bugged in Straits, it finally got to the point where I stopped going to them because there was always a good chance the event wouldn’t finish (if it was part of a longer chain), or with the contested waypoint, the odds that it would be over by the time I got there was pretty high, that it wasn’t actually worth the time to try to get there.

Without hearts, and with events bugged, waypoints contested, and maze-like zones, the Orr zones are kind of the worst ones (to this point).

Frostgorge Sound is a MUCH better zone to level to 80 in, IMO, and it’s “big event” isn’t ever bugged (that I’ve found) and isn’t over in under 5 minutes (like Blazeridge and sometimes Sparkfly).

I have to agree that the Orr area has yielded nothing but headaches so far for me. Skill point challenges continually being bugged have prevented me from completing the zones. I am finally just waiting on Malchor’s leap. All that headache to get lvl 76 or 78 mystics that I can’t even wear. Makes it hard to even appreciate the wait.

The Cursed Shore so far is the worst for me. Most of the events get stuck and I can’t seem to catch a big event going on there. I got in a troop escort a few times but they led to nothing. The event status said troops were alright for now and we’d be notified if they needed more escorts. Just felt like these escorts were filler events. Not nearly as smooth flowing at the previous two zones which was a large let down for the zone giving access to Arah.

If the events could get a good fix and provide some fluid continuity I could see the mood and enjoyment level raising immensely. Straights seemed full to the brim of events. Malchor’s was slightly less (it felt like). But Cursed Shore so far is the least continuous. I find myself already standing around on my high level character – I try to hit up events, participate in bosses… only to find almost every event bugged out, stuck somewhere, with other people running in circles asking ‘Bugged?’ over and over again.

_

I wrote my view elsewhere, but I’ll just copy/paste it here:

Funny enough, overall I find Frostgorge a much more enjoyable zone than Orr. I don’t know what it is about Orr, but something just feels… off.

I don’t know if it’s because you see the same landscape and the same enemies repeated into tedium, but the zone feels like it could do with some variety. It’s like three maps that are exactly the same, while Frostgorge, for instance, there are those magnificent sanctuaries, you also have Yak’s bend with it’s bit of greenery, those dredge mines, and the Drakkar corruption to the north west. Not to mention there’s the Claw of Jormag battle, easily the most fun and exciting battle I’ve encountered in the game.

Except for the temple runs, Orr just feels so… ugh.
I’d like to see a bit more incentive added to Orr as the level 80 endgame zone. Yes, the temples are fun, but other than that you just have a large number of undead standing around, which is the ‘threatening’ part of Orr, you might get packed by mobs. Maybe some large scale battles, NPCs, siege weapons, crazy bombings, against large groups or big enemies, like the dragon champions.

Maybe the zone can have strange changes happening, such as types of corruption that spreads, and twist things out of proportion, for instance a type of red corruption that drive things mad, causing constant attacks until you clear it, or blue where strange mages feed energies into conduits that charge up big undead monstrosities. I don’t know, something, anything.

The problem with Orr overall is that its just a straight shot into Arah once you have got there. On large servers the events are always pushed and the fail chance is so low as to make it almost a joke. DEs are more fun when they offer a challenge when its not just the mobs show up into a hail of AoE melting through waves in under 10 sec.

The way orr was explained i was expecting the server to need to come together and push as a community to get into Arah as multiple events poped up and needed to be taken care of as we pushed across the zones to finally gain access. A longer deeper battle that may take a day or 2 and open it up for as long as people defended points before finally being overwhelmed by the undead and pushed back having to fight again.

Orr is not fun at all that’s just it.

Lyssa and Balthazar have been bugged on my sever for as long as I have been in Orr. I’ve seen the former up once, and have never seen the latter up. Melandru is also now bugged on my server and has been for about a week. That leaves Dwayna, Grenth and Arah, right? 50% of the “big” Orr events not working is not really acceptable.

These events also need to happen more frequently, or the defend events need to be ramped up in difficulty and complexity. Defending the Temples should require multiple events to succeed, not just “kill a bunch of enemies for 5 minutes.” Holding onto them should be just as challenging(and rewarding!) as taking them. Do something to split the zerg up — have multiple objectives running simultaneously that all must succeed in order to hold the location.

Agreed… Disappointing to say the least…

Having one level 80 zone is not working.
The zone Cursed Shore is packed out and crowded and people run around in the ZERG!
It is so bad that the invisible mob thing happens nonstop, you can never see the mobs for the events and even when you do they’re dead because of the massive amount of AOE damage being done.

This can not be how Anet wanted end-game GW2 to be… and on top of trying to battle the ZERG to do events in Cursed Shore you now have the DR system punishing you and it no longer resets when you logout.

This is game is going down hill for me.

why do the catapults at the lyssa temple bombard the merchant? that temple in the middle DOES have a roof. after retaking the temple, why do the catapults still bombard players there? just kind of annoying when looking at gear for merchant, and you get slapped with poison and flown back from the merchant.

Players do seem to camp the main event ,but they miss out on the adventure and masses of karma .
Take the first temple event Balthazar ,you can join in and do that fight which can be a difficult encounter ,you get 370 karma or so and some vendor loot .

Or

You could find the beginning of the chain of events leading up to it.
They are varied and smaller events that reward the exact same karma as the climatic event at the temple.
The first part of the chain start off the island of Orr and leads you across the bridges then onto Orr itself .
There are about 8 points at which you receive the 370 ish karma.
This takes you around the first zone.
Then you have to help groups of npc’s from a couple other parts of the map to also get to Balthazar before you accompany the npc’s up the steps to confront the boss .

There is a lot to do leading up to the actual boss event and that is probably why the boss can take a while to appear ,some players believe these bosses spawn randomly and individually but you are only taking part in one of perhaps 10 or so events if you just wait for the boss to appear .

I have not found the start point to these events myself yet.Because before the patch on the 01/10 most of the chains were bugged .
But I know when you get Balthazar you are told to move further into Orr to the second zone and take the next temple ,I suspect and will try my best to find out that these events are part of one main chain that takes all the temples and eventually Grenth or perhaps Arah ,but I will definitely have fun finding out .

Repeated defending of one camp is not fun. You are missing the entire fun by doing this mind numbing behaviour to focus on exotics that are not needed to enjoy the adventure .
I hope that Arenanet focus more on these chained events and move away from dungeon type content as these are so much more fun.
It eliminates the elitist attitude we all have experienced in previous games such as, Sorry you not got gearscore xxxx
We need this specific class.
We have been looking for a tank for 2 hours to do a 20 minute dungeon.
No need for group finder ,no pressure .
Just a lot of players with the same goal.
Basically there does not need to be a leader because you are all aiming to kill a boss doing whatever you feel benefits the group such as rezzing removing conditions applying combo fields killing adds ,it all happens because it has to to get the rewards .

I think players have got so used to grind for gear formulae,That simply adventuring and letting others know were there is a group event happening and jumping in to help is being overlooked .

almost like summarize it by putting malchor stuff in Orr and then maybe some more. but stuff in malchor is actually quite hard… some stuff is like dungeon ish level

I was suprised to find out there would be 1 level 80 zone but I waited to see it and I agree. 1 zone at level 80 is not enough and they should have seen it as well.

1 zone filled the risen…. very boring very quick. People stay there not out of choice but necessity.

I agree with staying in Orr only because its the best place to farm and get money. I think that if I have a lvl 80 character I should be getting lvl 80 drops at the same rate as in Orr, wasn’t the whole world supposed to be Endgame? So far the rest of the world hasn’t been worth it.

@Overunity.4273
The problem is that you can only do these events once a day, at early morning.

On my server the first 2 maps of orr are deserted. The last one has a bunch of people repeating the same 3-4 events ad nauseam. Near impossible to find people to do anything else.
The zone is ugly (yes I know, opinions), painfull to navigate, crowded with more ugly stupid mobs I am forced to fight to get from A to B.
General design of the zone feels all wrong, this is my biggest disapointment with the game so far.
I’d like to see better designed chained events, that actually make sense.
I’d like to fight in areas with different scenery, not the same nightmarish dull place all the time.. heck when I first got there I thought .. “oh no they did it again, the lets make it an undead ugly as place to convey a sense of epicness high level syndrome”…

Cisza.9540:

@Overunity.4273
The problem is that you can only do these events once a day, at early morning.

I’am not aware of a restriction in how and when you can do them .
The only thing is ,sometimes one of the steps in the chain is bugged .

I did some more poking today as I want to focus on the 3 paths that lead to The Temple Of Balthazar .
This temple makes the karma vendor available that sells shards required in the recipe to make legendaries .

Up until this week it was mostly bugged so it was hard to work out the paths .
I did the chains about 4 times with 3 attempts at the boss that failed .
One chain were someone suggested doing the giant boss and we lost the pact .

You can start the chains yourself at Thorn pass wp and speak to the npc that calls you over . lol at first I thought he knew me personally . everyone calls me Over
One starts at squalls cusp .
One starts at the dock
One starts at Stentor Cannonade in signals peak .

They all head for the Rally Waypoint and on to Balthazar as far as I’am aware since the Dock one was bugged and would not start for our server .

But all three are repeatable from my experience and earn a lot of karma for the whole path
These three chains so far for me have been awesome in fact the most fun I have had in game .
I’am trying to make Players aware of the fun that they give .
A few players that join comment "man this is awesome " type comments among others .

Please try to do a full path and come here and give some feedback and tips since I’am still discovering .

Although if your server is like mine you will have to make people aware as you go that the invasion chain to the temple is at your nearest waypoint .

But most times I end up with a big group ,although lots do not know the boss abilities and get one shotted by his aoe or the constant flags that do tons of damage or the red circles were massive damaging flames drop onto and the champion he spawned to help him .
If you are not watching all of this you die quick and if the wp’s are contested you can struggle to get back to the event maybe even having to respawn in the next zone .

I have loads of fun and I want others to discover these fun paths ,honestly there is a ton of karma and three very different paths .
42000 karma comes round real quick when your having fun .

kaesebrezen.3104:

Do you know how many (new) people enter the zone each day and ask “any events?” on which nobody answers?

Events need wider (zone-wide) automated announcement. Stuff might be going on while many players don’t know about it. Having to ask is primitive, and is often not answered.

helladoom.4317:

kaesebrezen.3104:

Do you know how many (new) people enter the zone each day and ask “any events?” on which nobody answers?

Events need wider (zone-wide) automated announcement. Stuff might be going on while many players don’t know about it. Having to ask is primitive, and is often not answered.

I never did a game video before but I totally agree that not a lot of players seem to know about the chains so I did a couple of videos to outline what I have discovered
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRX8ratwsMc