Guild Wars 2

Not really a whine thread, just thought I’d provide my current thoughts on a part of the game-type I invested heavily in last year.

#6.) No Community
Every other part of this game has a forum, and active participation from the GW2 community to discuss that segment of the game, but I don’t even know if General Discussion was the right place to put this list, lol. Nowhere is there a place that labels or even implies discussion of activities in the game. How do you know if people actually like Keg Brawl? Without any outside-game participation, the game doesn’t evolve. The meta doesn’t change and the game doesn’t garner enough interest to develop for. Perhaps it’s in large part because of the problems listed here that we know everyone doesn’t like Keg Brawl at this point.

Which makes it difficult to understand why it’s even still in the game. It’s a slap in the face to anyone (mostly me) who desperately wants Keg Brawl to be more, and a chore for the other 99.99999% of players who purchased and still play this game just so they can get another achievement point for their daily participation. And I don’t enjoy being slapped.

#5.) No Support
Because the game doesn’t have any competitive support such as leader boards, or cosmetic rewards more than a single title, no one will or should care about this game type. So if Anet does not think it’s worth developing further into, and clearly the entire GW2 community doesn’t enjoy it as it currently is, then why is it still in this game?

Maybe at one point they planned for activities to be worth something, but now you can’t even list them as a feature of the game. More people actively engage in the sport that is Lion’s Arch map chat than do people who even acknowledge Keg Brawl’s existence in this game…

#4.) Every game has blatant server-side lag
Seriously, is Anet hosting the servers for Keg Brawl (and possibly the other activities) in the bathroom or something? It’s always suffered from horribly weird and buggy up and down lag spikes that lead to so many obnoxious glitches.

I can’t fathom why Keg Brawl, a game of 10 players in an instanced version of Hoelbrak, lags more frequently, and in larger magnitude than any I’ve experienced in my entire time playing in World versus World.

#3.) Rampant afk’ers for daily achievement
As if you needed any more of a reason to take this dog out back… Keg Brawl is the only activity on the rotation that is a team based competitive game-type, so it suffers a lot more from people who join an activity and AFK just to get a daily done while they go make some hot chocolate.

It makes anything aspiring to be a competitive game-type a joke when 20 or 40 percent of your team is comprised of leeches. You’re pretty much asking people not to try and win, but only to be happy with their daily activity participation and move on.

#2.) Only available once a week
This is one of the worst offenders, because if we can forget for a moment that this game is terrible, and pretend there’s someone… anyone… out there who enjoys this game type enough to spend more than a single game playing it per week, you’ve artificially limited them to being unable to play 85% of the time.

I would love to hear the reasoning behind that, because I honestly feel sorrow for people who enjoy any of the other activities who couldn’t get one extra day to play, say, Southsun Survival because ArenaNet’s artificially keeping this Spirit-of-the-Wild forsaken creature alive by shoehorning it into the rotation…

#1.) Still can’t play with friends
Every other part of this game allows you to play with friends. From something as simple as your personal story, to huge fundamental mechanics of the game like guesting or waypoint/fast travel that exist so that you can enjoy the game with friends. You can even play hot-join PvP with friends…

However, the activities, which are expressly for fun and offer such a wide variety of play experiences that can appeal to both the humbly-casual and the hardcore-competitive, still carries on with the gross oversight that you are not able to enjoy this with your friends?… Sadness everlasting.

Tl;dr: Serelisk uses General Discussion as his soapbox for ANet conspiracy to overthrow his enjoyment of Keg Brawl

I feel your pain. Keg Brawl and Crab Toss are the greatest activities out there. They require actual skill to a certain point.
Also you forgot to mention the way balancing works. I can’t say how many times I was 3 vs 1 because I don’t know..reasons I guess. My only chance was if one of those was afk or all were really bad. You can’t do much against 2 people knocking you down permanently while the 3rd happily runs away with the keg. You only have 3 dodges. Bonus points if he/she laughs and calls you “noob”.

Well, if it’s not a good game, and no one likes it, maybe it should just be removed from the game.

Keg Brawl was one of my favorite things in beta. I wish it had gotten any support. Being able to play with friends would be terrific, and it would be better if they put it back to being its own instance so you’d know the people there actually wanted to be there and play.

Loaded into a game today and its five people watching the other team score so they can lose faster to get daily credit. Sad.

But hey at least it’s not Crab Toss.

Vayne.8563:

Well, if it’s not a good game, and no one likes it, maybe it should just be removed from the game.

+1

I don’t like being reminded every Saturday that ArenaNet hates me.

SlothBear.9846:

But hey at least it’s not Crab Toss.

10/10, would laugh again

robertul.3679:

Also you forgot to mention the way balancing works.

There’s a lot of stuff I didn’t mention.

6 – agree. It would be nice to have an Activities forum and subforums for the individual games, though I don’t think it’s desperately needed.

5 – meh. I’d play the game regardless of leaderboards/achievements/cosmetic stuff (though I might play a little less if the achieves were taken out). You do still get achievements as well as money and karma for participating in any daily event, so I wouldn’t call them worthless.

4 – somewhat agree. I’ve experienced lag and rubber banding in keg brawl when the game is usually smooth for me, though I don’t get it in every single game I play.

3 – I haven’t really seen this. I might be lucky, or it might be because of when I play (usually not right after the daily reset).

2 – I’m also disappointed that it’s available once a week, but that’s because I’d like it to be in the rotation more often.

1 – heartily agree. I wish Anet would update all activities so that parties could go in – it’d be a blast to be able to play with friends or organize a guild tournament. Balance by trying to match groups together and single players with other single players if the group joining isn’t large enough to have its own game.

Overall I agree that keg brawl should get some attention, but I don’t want it just taken out of the game completely. I still find it really fun to play.

Just for #1, I don’t like the idea of being to create “friends only” or “guild only” games because of the potential for achievement point farming.

Unless, such games offer no achievement points/achievement progression.

All activities need some love by the developers.

Anyone played Southsun Survival lately? It’s bugged and nobody cares, you are not immobilized when a game begins, but the immobilize kicks in seconds after the match has began.

What about the terrible fps drop that still exist in Crab Toss, or that the game gives priority to destroying the crates instead of picking up the crab (when both are close) seriously?

Keg Brawl needs a team-arena version badly. It’s a team game without an actual team mode.

Let’s be real though, with all the issues that the game has, how close to the top of the priority list do you think activities are? I bet they are very close to the bottom, so we won’t see an update for them any time, which is weird, because over the past year we’ve seen loads of NEW activities, but no changes/imporevements to the old ones.

justkoh.4073:

Unless, such games offer no achievement points/achievement progression.

The framework is already here and it’s called Custom Arena. When you create a Custom Arena, if you change the default rules you don’t get any glory, the same could happen with a custom version of the activities, no loot, no achievement points. Besides, if they are used as guild/community events the organisers would want to give their own rewards, not a couple of achievement points and a chest with some karma and a green item.

Great thread. Some people still like the activities, but they do need Anet’s attention. ETA for fixes? I’d give at another 6 months or so, at least.

Doctor Orderly MD PhD DDS.7625:

Great thread. Some people still like the activities, but they do need Anet’s attention. ETA for fixes? I’d give at another 6 months or so, at least.

In a game that can’t manage condition damage by player or deal with summoned pets, I wouldn’t be looking for any performance fixes period. I think Anet painted themselves into a corner here.

robertul.3679:

I feel your pain. Keg Brawl and Crab Toss are the greatest activities out there. They require actual skill to a certain point.

Why do I get the feeling that you’re not joking? Honestly, the only thing worse than the keg brawl is the crab toss, and no skill is required. The only thing that could make it better, if we could play with friends as a group. That’s it.

As they stand now these two (for the lack of better words) things to do daily, are only done for the daily.

Keg Brawl is my favorite of the current minigames. So being only able to play it once per week, the afkers and the lag are the worst offenders for me.

My least favorite minigame is crab toss. Too much chaos.

Keg Brawl shouldn’t be just PVP. It should have been it’s own game mode, with teams, Leaderboards, People should be able to walk up and watch, Team emblems, Game championships, AI Teams.

Bah nvm, it will never be done and is a missed opportunity.

The first time I tried keg brawl I didn’t know what I was doing and one of the players started calling me names and stuff. I never went back in.

Anyway, I like a couple of the mini games, but i would only ever do it once a day. Lol

I have to agree, I don’t think activities get the attention they deserve. Aside from the aforementioned issues, I think a new reward or ranking system should be implemented for incentive.

I loved keg brawl, but busy doing other things now :p

I love keg brawl. It is my favorite activity.

There are so few all-stars out there though and most games are just herding cats or doing a majority of the work.

Really need to allow custom arenas to host keg brawl so it can fix all the issues with keg brawl (little reward, cant form teams, cant play with friends etc).

Every time keg brawl is up I actively help the enemy team to get a faster daily.

I agree that all the activities should be available 24/7, and that Team-based Keg Brawl mode should definitely be an option. Having an organised team that knows how to pass, run interference etc. is really a lot of fun, but it’s dang hard to get that going these days when 95% of your players are only there to do the Daily.

Also, I love Crab Toss. I win about 9/10 of my matches.

All activities (especially the dragon brawl thing) should be available in custom arenas.

It’s a mini game. Anet barely puts resources into pvp you expect them to start dumping them into mini games?

The minigames already use the spvp stuff to run them, I would imagine it wouldn’t be too much effort for them to make it available. Plus because custom arena’s are paid, they have an immediate way to recoup the costs.

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

robertul.3679:

I feel your pain. Keg Brawl and Crab Toss are the greatest activities out there. They require actual skill to a certain point.

Why do I get the feeling that you’re not joking? Honestly, the only thing worse than the keg brawl is the crab toss, and no skill is required. The only thing that could make it better, if we could play with friends as a group. That’s it.

As they stand now these two (for the lack of better words) things to do daily, are only done for the daily.

There is a great number of skills to learn in keg brawl, the difference between a skilled and unskilled keyboard turner is pretty huge.

Did you know you can defensively deny (delete) kegs?

Did you know you can step infront of passes and scoring attempts to intercept the keg? (The number of times i’ve stolen the keg with the #3 skill is pretty big).

Did you know playing proper zone and utilizing passing is the best way to win and defend?

Sure you can just try to hussle the kegs in kindergartener style but better players will outplay that strategy.

If I could I would challenge arenanet to a 5v5 keg brawl, to be streamed on their twitch channel.

Draygo.9473:

Did you know you can defensively deny (delete) kegs?

Ehhh, I dunno about that tactic. Deliberately throwing kegs out of the arena feels like a cheap trick to me, like how some soccer players will fake injury when they’re not actually hurt to try and get an enemy player sent off. I always get annoyed when somebody else does that, whether they’re on my team or not.

Agreed on all the other points though.

Where was all this support 5 Months Ago?

It would be nice to see some changes to the activities. If guilds could go in and mess around together we mights see more then just some achev hunters in there everyday.

Zaxares.5419:

Draygo.9473:

Did you know you can defensively deny (delete) kegs?

Ehhh, I dunno about that tactic. Deliberately throwing kegs out of the arena feels like a cheap trick to me, like how some soccer players will fake injury when they’re not actually hurt to try and get an enemy player sent off. I always get annoyed when somebody else does that, whether they’re on my team or not.

Agreed on all the other points though.

It makes defense possible against skilled opponents. It also deals with the situation where the game seems to think you should have 80 kegs on the field :P.

Not doing it weakens defense and makes offense too strong imo. Denying should stay, and players should use it. Its not like its unfair.

Maybe. I can see where you’re coming from, but I’m always reminded of this one time where we had one skilled player who planted himself near the enemy goalkeeper, was stealing kegs from the enemy and then immediately throwing them out of the Arena. Considering we were already winning at the time, it seemed less like a valid defensive tactic and more like somebody just rubbing it in by refusing to let the enemy team score at all.

I’ve only ever seen the number of kegs on the field go up to 5 before, and that was when the game bugged and the match kept on going even after the timer expired. New kegs are not added to the field unless an existing keg is turned in or thrown out of the field.

Zaxares.5419:

Maybe. I can see where you’re coming from, but I’m always reminded of this one time where we had one skilled player who planted himself near the enemy goalkeeper, was stealing kegs from the enemy and then immediately throwing them out of the Arena. Considering we were already winning at the time, it seemed less like a valid defensive tactic and more like somebody just rubbing it in by refusing to let the enemy team score at all.

I’ve only ever seen the number of kegs on the field go up to 5 before, and that was when the game bugged and the match kept on going even after the timer expired. New kegs are not added to the field unless an existing keg is turned in or thrown out of the field.

Denying kegs is a really lame trick which is imho only a side-effect of a mechanism designed to get rid of unreachable kegs. I’d love to get rid of it but it’s probably not possible
Kegs are not limited on the field, I’ve already seen 4 kegs being added at the same time. However, kegs 2 and 3 will not appear before a very long time unless the previous are either scored or destroyed.

Keg Brawl is by far my fovourite activity and I wanted to play more of it since beta, I see so much potential in it. Think if they add team arena, some little tournament and a proper reward system.
Hell i’d play keg brawl more than anything else in the game!

I think Crab Toss right now is the best mini game beside SAB.

Zaxares.5419:

Maybe. I can see where you’re coming from, but I’m always reminded of this one time where we had one skilled player who planted himself near the enemy goalkeeper, was stealing kegs from the enemy and then immediately throwing them out of the Arena. Considering we were already winning at the time, it seemed less like a valid defensive tactic and more like somebody just rubbing it in by refusing to let the enemy team score at all.

I’ve only ever seen the number of kegs on the field go up to 5 before, and that was when the game bugged and the match kept on going even after the timer expired. New kegs are not added to the field unless an existing keg is turned in or thrown out of the field.

Its only unfair if the opposing team doesn’t know how to play, then its just taking candy from a baby. But if you are up against skilled opponents its pretty much required to prevent the enemy team from scoring. Because if you manage to steal or intercept the keg near the enemy goal you are not going to be able to bring it out to midfield unless you have ability #5 off cooldown. If you don’t deny it they just knock it out of your hands and score anyway. Against skilled opponents it is therefor a waste of time to try to defend and you should focus everything on offense. Denying lets defense actually mean something.

Also new kegs are added to the field even if no keg is scored/denied. Sometimes even 3 at once.

Keep in mind each player has 3 dodges when running the keg, and the defense has only one ability that knocks the keg out, and 2 abilities that knock the runner down. And the runner can still throw the keg with skill #1 when knocked down. Defense is not easy. And I don’t think denying is going away so it would be better if it was embraced – its not imbalanced and adds to the game instead of detracting from it.

Deleting kegs seems like unfair play to me, thought I sometimes do it in desperation.

Is it? What specifically is unfair about it? Keep in mind the defender must first steal the keg before they can attempt to deny it.

Without it, defense is mostly a waste of time. You are better served waiting for the next keg in the center than trying to get the keg all the way down the arena.

I’ll never understand what the point of having competitive game modes if you won’t allow them to actually be competitive.

Keg Brawl isn’t unplayable due to the afk’ers but due the tremendous bugs.
A few examples I run in over and over again:

• Someone gets knocked down but still manages to throw the keg
• People you can intercept you by simply running behind you if you try to throw the barrel
• If you try to evade while you’re knocked down you will evade immediately after your character got back up
• If you charge after a player (skill #4 without keg) your character stops for half a second in front of the enemy giving him time to evade
• Exaggerated hitboxes even for norn when using skill #2 without keg

That first point isn’t a bug. You’re still able to pass kegs even while knocked down. This is why it’s important to position yourself in between the enemy and another player/goalkeeper to stop them throwing the keg to someone else.

That second point ties into the above, and is probably lag related.

@Draygo: That’s a fair point, although it still feels “wrong” somehow. May just be a personal feeling. For me, if I’m running interference at the enemy goal, my goal is simply to keep the enemy from scoring as long as possible to tie up enemy players and allow the rest of my team to pick up kegs and run them back unhindered. In some cases, this is actually more effective because throwing the keg out of field means the enemy players who were otherwise occupied trying to get the keg back from you now just run back to the center and attack the rest of my team.

It probably feels wrong because the majority of players are not doing it.

Yet its quite intended. I just played a fun game where it was 10-11, only reason it was close to begin with is because of denials. An active deny game means passing is even more important, and trying to solo run it in is poor play.

Keg brawl mechanics used to be broken. With an ability you could use to launch a keg out of the other side of the arena from the enemy side. Now I find them quite crisp and fun if it wasn’t for lag issues from time to time.

I hope these mini games will be made guild games at some point. Like personal pvp arenas, you buy a guild game and your guild can join it when ever they want together.

I showed my friend the activities a couple of weeks ago. And was really disappointed when I found out we weren’t in the same instance. …

I enjoy the other activities, sprint being my favourite. I take part in all of them BUT this one!
I tried it today, and just could not get the hang of it. (I don’t think it helps that you’re on a team, with people you don’t even have a chance to say “hi” to. ).

And the lag! ..I only experience similar lag in LA.

I do hope they expand on the mini games, ..they are fun and have alot of potential

LunarNacht.8913:

I hope these mini games will be made guild games at some point. Like personal pvp arenas, you buy a guild game and your guild can join it when ever they want together.

Do want.

They could start by improving the stability.
Then make Team join or Solo join like in PvP.
Have teams registry, uniforms and everything.

With that maybe they could create a community around it, there’s no short of people with too much time that have “nothing” to do in game.

Dean Calaway.9718:

They could start by improving the stability.
Then make Team join or Solo join like in PvP.
Have teams registry, uniforms and everything.

With that maybe they could create a community around it, there’s no short of people with too much time that have “nothing” to do in game.

I couldn’t agree more. The worst part about the entire situation revolving around Keg Brawl is the silence. I don’t think they’ve mentioned a specific feature update to Keg Brawl since like January 2013, even when they have patches that make severe changes to it.

And then refuse to make any explanation of these changes anywhere. Who asked for these? I didn’t. Why are they doing them?

Had a spectacular game today.

The time expired. This is the first time that has ever happened for me, ending score was 9-10. Shout out to Nibble and Zillac on the other team for giving it a good run.

Pulled off some jaw dropping intercepts.

i LOVE keg brawl, i mean its my favorite minigame (southsun survival comes really close but its just too fustrating and too many cheaters who hide with ration bags ruin it)

but keg brawl is instantly fun EVERY time i play it, true it took some time to get used to the controls, and it doesnt have its own uniqe rewards (which is a problem EVERYWHERE in this game) but i laugh and clap my hands with excitment when i play keg brawl

now crab toss…..that one is awful

All the fun stuff… keg brawl, ss survival, aspect arena….

CANT PLAY WITH YOUR FRIENDS

I’d grind dungeons all month just to keep paying for a monthly PVP server if you guys would include these [obviously pvp] fun games to the server selection options. I’d survival with my guildies all month, and I’d love it. And you’d get lots of pvp server money. think about it.

It would be really nice if Keg Brawl was an option for a game mode in sPvP.

1. Yeah…if the idea is to toss kegs around i would gladly chuck it at my friends and have a laugh as they get knocked in the face by an exploding barrel of ale.

2. IF THE IDEA OF CRAB TOSS IS TO TOSS CRABS… WHY NOT MAKE IT A TEAM GAME… IT’S LIKE TEAM BASED MONKEY IN THE MIDDLE… seriously… i still dont understand crab toss… “Crab Toss”… should be 100% team game based upon the name itself.

3. once a week is pretty bad considering bar brawl was one of the main highlights in their intro videos. The put a lot of emphasis upon it. I was expecting a more indoor WWE type of thing. not just throwing kegs around willy nilly