Guild Wars 2

ColinJohanson.2394:

Based on responses I’m not sure some of you read my post past the first paragraph….I’m agreeing with you, thus the:

“The one thing that’s really missing is the rewards to help make playing in these locations more even exciting and rewarding than they are now.”

And no, we’re not putting in a new currency, we have plenty of those

Ah thanks. I was halfway to the ER until I read your response.
Now if I could have you sign here, here and here promising me you’ll never put another currency into this game, and sign here as well to promise me that I have an increased chance at “the lover” drop…that’d be swell! If I had that precursor, I would be in game a lot more

It just seems like such a lost cause at the moment. But I digress from the topic.

I think the approach that Mr. Johanson outlines sounds like the right one to take. We need zones that are higher difficulty (specifically with complex DEs, temples and plenty of champion level mobs), and the reason people aren’t going is solely related to reward levels. Addressing those two issues will make me very happy.

I dont want Orr to become nothing but an event farm where people can afk through waves and collect heavy moldy bags – I want it to be a highly challenging experience that rewards both groups and individuals in meaningful – and unique – ways. Maybe drop a couple of Giganticus Lupicuses (Lupici?) wandering around the zone as well.

Grenth is a step in the right direction in relation to difficulty (not perfect, but going the right direction) – I would love to see all of Cursed Shore become that challenging (without the griefable mechanics related to Keeper Jonez, of course).

The idea of unique rewards from temples and a better reward system from champion mobs will be just the thing to get people back in the zone, but it does need to be a sustainable and adaptable system. I dont envy the developers on the challenge that presents.

ColinJohanson.2394:

There are indeed!

We’ve had a lot of feedback from folks asking for more difficult places in the game that can be more rewarding to play in. Our intent with Orr (and Southsun) is to create areas that are more fun/difficult for groups to play through event chains, with events that scale better when larger groups of players show up than the rest of the game, rather than the old versions that fell apart when more than a group or so of players showed up.

Thus the continual updates this year to make the creatures in Orr have more varied skills, the swap over to the new event scaling system that creates veterans/champions as content scales up, and the updates to Southsun to have more playable content. The one thing that’s really missing is the rewards to help make playing in these locations more even exciting and rewarding than they are now.

We want champions to be more rewarding, so places like Orr/Southsun where events can scale up to create champions become one of the more fun and rewarding places in the game to play, since events there can be champion on demand generators to an extent. We’d also like to tie in additional unique rewards to the temple chains, to make those more worthwhile and differentiate them from the giant boss encounters (which we’ll also be upgrading to be more exciting) to give a reason to do each in a day. We’d also like to add more value and use to blue/green items, so things like killing vets feels more rewarding when those type of items drop when doing those events in Orr as well.

Hi Colin, are there any future changes planned for Southsun Cove? Its a bit sad to see it happen(again?) but the area is just as it was before “Secrets of Southsun” but now half of the waypoints are contested and going through Driftglass Springs means death because nobody is going there to do these events.

I loved the whole idea of a Meta Event there but think its the wrong type of event. It would seem more attractive for it to start with one event then move to the next and the next etc. Similar to that of The Lost Shores even chain because its progressive and won’t have players running back to other camps trying to re-take them over and over.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Based on responses I’m not sure some of you read my post past the first paragraph….I’m agreeing with you, thus the:

“The one thing that’s really missing is the rewards to help make playing in these locations more even exciting and rewarding than they are now.”

And no, we’re not putting in a new currency, we have plenty of those

Colin, it was precisely your attempts to improve Orr that emptied it, remember? Reward is only one dimension of concern. Orr, after the Jan update and before Feb, used to be a fun place to group up with others, get to know people, and enjoy the game. People don’t enjoy failure fests and the MMO is not about crushing challenge.

Do a post-mortem. Ask what emptied Orr and why players are complaining (the answers are actually all here in this thread). Ask why no one goes to Southsun now after the event. The answers to these questions, and their remedy, will go a long way to making GW2 a fun, rewarding game to play.

Something else the development team could work toward is allowing Orr to shift and change for those who have defeated Zhaitan.

This can be done in a similar fashion to how they implemented game changing code into GW1 with “Winds Of Change” where the afflicted are no longer in the zone and the zone is replaced with more of the non-afflicted mobs of that area.

This would allow the introduction of post-Zhaitan event chains to reflect having removed his corruption and working toward new things coming back and a rebuilding of Orr, etc.

Not only that, but then they could add an NPC (or other way) to allow you to change between pre and post-Zhaitan Orr.

In a way I almost expected that at some point it would maybe work like this instead of having a perpetual pre-Zhaitan.

Sounds good in theory but execution is what will matter. I think Southsun is a good case study because now that the MF buff has been removed players have in essence decided that added difficult isn’t worth it. When I logged last night it had been 20 hours since the Karka Queen had been killed and that’s on TC which is a pretty kitten heavy PvE server.

Personally I love the hectic/difficult meta event but clearly the playerbase doesnt without the MF buff. So making the rewards match the difficulty is going to be the key thing in terms of player acceptance.

One suggestion I have is making it so Champs/Vets drop extra crafting mats (3-4 for Champs & 1-2 for Vets) rather than always just Blue/Greens which I don’t see any way of making more valuable. I’ll be glad if ANet proves me wrong but I’m not hopeful :P

One other suggestion is when these events start spawning Champions the event should upgrade to Group Event, status since they truly are at that point, and that distinction should be noticeable to the players in terms of money/karma/xp.

Orr was more fun back when I was able to solo things like Grenth and Dwayna, though the reward for doing so wasn’t worth it at all, which is another problem (backwards risk vs reward – solo/small group it, or zerg it and get the same rewards at a fraction of the time). Now, Dwayna requires a groups worth of DPS to get through the healing and Grenth’s after event is just op. I can still pretty much solo Grenth’s boss, but the constant stream of AoEs/marks placed by the adds, which tick instantly, can be very deadly.

The current direction seems to be catered to zerging or, but I doubt this, highly coordinated teams. Southsun events are all pretty zergy, but things like the champion spider in Orr is definitely designed for a large group, since, from what I saw, it doesn’t even give you the chance to stop the adds from spawning (egg sacks like vet spiders).

My best memory of Orr is the first Grenth change, where the vortexes were added. I started Grenth, and around 30 people showed up after a minute in (first time ever being in a Grenth zerg). At around 20%, there was 30 dead bodies, most of which refusing to respawn. I solo’d that last 20%, not killing a single shade, since I also learned at this time that their aura could be evaded. I then proceeded to rez 30 dead bodies.

Vol.5241:

If you get more than 1 drake on you, you’re going to get stunned and die from confusion (even if you cleanse it they reapply)

Drakes are pretty op, since their confusion puddle that ticks the instant it’s created nearly 1 shots me, but the stun can be completely avoided. The stun comes after the pull, which you should dodge, which comes after the puddle.

The vision sounds good but a lot of the players find the execution to be lacking.

In regards to rewards, it becomes hard to find a way to keep a sort of horizontal progression and offer meaningful rewards to players that want to play to feel like they gained something substantial out of difficult encounters.

I am against a gear grind and the progression approach, but I understand the basic stimuli that these things fulfill for many players.

So to reward us and not offer a new currency or form of progression, it would have to be something that is sought after by the player base in the current iteration of the game.

The only thing I can think of would be gold, precursors, legendaries, and t6 crafting materials; such as crystaline dust and powerful bloods and the like.

I can’t imagine having legendary items drop so freely being a good thing, even if it is a low percentage drop. Precursors would be enticing, but maybe make legendary items less special if they are so readily available too.

This leaves us at crafting materials and gold. If these things were to drop at a meaningful rate and at a high enough quantity to warrant the upscaling of content for 10-20 or what ever the vision is of people to be doing this content, I think it would encourage a good chunk of the player base to attempt these things.

Maybe even tie in the dropped items to the amount of people attending to some degree? This could be abused though to get 25 people together and result in everyone getting 25 dusts or something to that effect.

As for gold returns, I think this is another thing that players are finding it difficult to obtain, as well as those crafting materials. How to increase the quantity of these items without devaluing them is an issue as always, but there are plenty of gold sinks in the game that I think an increase in earnings outside of the trading post game would not hurt the rest of the population and economy.

I like orr, the temples are pretty great. More rewards will bring people back, people are lootwhores, it’s why there’s noone in southsun without the 200% mf buff :p

Maybe if they could find some way to reward laurels for doing things like temple events or other events. As an example, say the mobs drop tokens of some sort and you can buy laurels with these tokens. This would help bring people to Orr as they can buy ascended jewelry or mats, ect, with tokens. There are a number of people who would like more laurels but can’t play everyday or their guilds are too small to get the commendations.

Weekend ‘Pact Rallies’ in Orr would be cool. A stacking magic find bonus for each temple taken during the rally, then this ‘Boost’ would last for the week until the next weekend, when the Risen ‘rally’ back and retake the temples. Rinse repeat.

During the weekdays it could just be Orr as usual, though I’m not sure a simple magic find boost will fix the loot issues in the zone. Honestly it’s really kittened up, so many ‘exploited/over farmed’ events have been so utterly neutered that mobs simply don’t have drops, let alone good ones.

If the design decision ever involves completely removing loot from anything in the game then it is WRONG. Never should I spend time killing something and not be rewarded for it. Even if it will drop a porous bone 90% of the time it should drop something and it should give xp. I think that is the biggest problem with the changes i’ve seen so far. I spend 10 minutes killing something or a group of somethings and I get absolutely nothing for it.

What happens is that players completely ignore those events or just leave the area. If you are concerned about bots then change the spawns, don’t ever think removing the loot is a valid option.

ColinJohanson.2394:

And now off to do that work thing, thanks for the feedback folks, as always keep it coming we really appreciate it!

Thank you for your time, Colin. I appreciate it very much. I am also getting more excited about Orr now.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Based on responses I’m not sure some of you read my post past the first paragraph….I’m agreeing with you, thus the:

“The one thing that’s really missing is the rewards to help make playing in these locations more even exciting and rewarding than they are now.”

And no, we’re not putting in a new currency, we have plenty of those

Yeah, this was my response:

Something even more exciting and rewarding than the chance of getting a jade weapon skin during the Dragon Bash celebration?

;)

Glad to know you guys are looking at the reward structure. Beware however that even if you increase rewards substantially; those rewards have to be worth going after.

Jemmi.6058:

Please no!

I hope to never return there.

This most be one of the guys who does cof p1 6h a day.

Anyway, yes. Its the end game zone. But its anet we are talking about.

All areas of the game except Orr have kills, veteran kills, and event completion daily achievements. If we want players in Orr more often, it should be included in the dailies like the other areas.

ColinJohanson.2394:

There are indeed!

We’ve had a lot of feedback from folks asking for more difficult places in the game that can be more rewarding to play in. Our intent with Orr (and Southsun) is to create areas that are more fun/difficult for groups to play through event chains, with events that scale better when larger groups of players show up than the rest of the game, rather than the old versions that fell apart when more than a group or so of players showed up.

Thus the continual updates this year to make the creatures in Orr have more varied skills, the swap over to the new event scaling system that creates veterans/champions as content scales up, and the updates to Southsun to have more playable content. The one thing that’s really missing is the rewards to help make playing in these locations more even exciting and rewarding than they are now.

We want champions to be more rewarding, so places like Orr/Southsun where events can scale up to create champions become one of the more fun and rewarding places in the game to play, since events there can be champion on demand generators to an extent. We’d also like to tie in additional unique rewards to the temple chains, to make those more worthwhile and differentiate them from the giant boss encounters (which we’ll also be upgrading to be more exciting) to give a reason to do each in a day. We’d also like to add more value and use to blue/green items, so things like killing vets feels more rewarding when those type of items drop when doing those events in Orr as well.

And of course, we’d like to remove culling from PvE as well so you can experience these events in all their glory when they do scale up.

We’ll go into specifics on all of this in an updated version of the Gw2 in 2013 blog post sometime in July focusing on our plan for the 2nd half of the year and how we plan to improve the core game experience. As a reminder, you can find the original detailing our high level plan here: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/colin-johanson-on-guild-wars-2-in-the-months-ahead/

Awesome! I’m glad to finally see that the value of blues/greens are being looked at. It always made me sad to receive pointless blues and greens that would sell for about 1 silver each. While we’re on this topic, I feel like it’s my duty to point out that I haven’t received a single exotic drop since launch, and I have almost 2500 hours in this game. Drop rates, and the value of those drops need to be increased please.

Neb.4170:

Weekend ‘Pact Rallies’ in Orr would be cool. A stacking magic find bonus for each temple taken during the rally, then this ‘Boost’ would last for the week until the next weekend, when the Risen ‘rally’ back and retake the temples. Rinse repeat.

During the weekdays it could just be Orr as usual, though I’m not sure a simple magic find boost will fix the loot issues in the zone. Honestly it’s really kittened up, so many ‘exploited/over farmed’ events have been so utterly neutered that mobs simply don’t have drops, let alone good ones.

Not that your idea is an entirely bad idea or anything, but weekend only stuff like this does not help everyone. There is a big player base that plays only during the week, just as there is a big player base that plays mainly on the weekends. There is no reason to exclude or shun one of these player bases.

And if you don’t have the reward system done yet that you intend to implement for these areas, why in the world would you go ahead and change the events to make them harder now? These changes should have waited until the rewards were ready also.

How about next time, you make the rewards better first, then you go and make the events more challenging later.

ColinJohanson.2394:

We’d also like to tie in additional unique rewards to the temple chains, to make those more worthwhile and differentiate them from the giant boss encounters (which we’ll also be upgrading to be more exciting) to give a reason to do each in a day. We’d also like to add more value and use to blue/green items, so things like killing vets feels more rewarding when those type of items drop when doing those events in Orr as well.

Is there any idea/incentive to add more unique rewards to dungeons as well, like the way Dungeons in GW1 had special (sellable) skins that were unique to the dungeons?

I personally think this would solve a lot of the risk vs reward issues some dungeon paths face and motivate players to step outside of CoF p1 for once and experience other dungeons.

For a more detailed writeup about Dungeons and unique skins, I’d like to refer to my thread here

*Thanks for taking the time to answer this thread. *

I could care less about the new trinkets you guys are gonna add to orr and it bothers me immensely you have to focus so much in rewards to actually run an mmo. (just Ctrl+F the word “reward” here: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/colin-johanson-on-guild-wars-2-in-the-months-ahead/ for instance). Don’t let this game boil down to “reward systems”. Please. It has too much potential to just turn it into a skinner box.

But as long as the focus is fun mechanics, encounters and an active zone, go for it. Bit skeptical but I’m looking forward for the next 6 months.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Based on responses I’m not sure some of you read my post past the first paragraph….I’m agreeing with you, thus the:

“The one thing that’s really missing is the rewards to help make playing in these locations more even exciting and rewarding than they are now.”

And no, we’re not putting in a new currency, we have plenty of those

I’d like to know what you mean with “rewards”… Because unless you guys makes them drop T6 mats or lodestone or a decent amount of money more often… Green and blue crap is everything but “reward”…

1 hour fighting risens in Orr or karka in Southsun, should be more rewarding than doing 10 CoF path 1 runs, right?

Whatever you do don’t drop difficulty!

We need areas with uw/fow style face stomping. Just try to keep it as balanced as you can (10 bazillion champion young Karka in Southsun…maybe a bit much.). And get those rewards comparative (more Orr exclusive skins, rare drops , fow style armor sets, etc.).

If you pull it off, I will do a dance. :x

The biggest problem with Orr is Zhaitan and his army of undead.

You can change Orr as much as you like and add in epic rewards but people will still always dislike the place because of the constent zombie theme that has been abused to death.

I think they should rework all off Orrs maps so the land is now healed, introduce Hearts to complete, make it a regular map.

Then introduce NEW level 80 maps with new rewards, tough event chains, new story, so on… you have an entire world out there to explore, we have killed Zhaitan already, we have killed millions of undead… its time to move on and let Orr heal.

unique rewards is an entirely new direction from what you wanted to achieve in the beginning. Back then you stated that there shouldn’t be unique rewards so that people don’t feel they have to do certain content and can play the game the way they want (paraphrased). As time went by I found out that I really missed unique viable rewards.

(there are tons of unique rewards but I have no idea what to do with them. some like the teleportation gun are awesome but it’s imho awkward implemented. Should be permanent and with a higher price attached to it instead of cheap and awkward to use. Those items could have been new found utility skills).

Can you give us a small hint in which direction these new rewards will go? Is it similar to the mystic forge (which I don’t like personally). Something to gamble or something which is tied in with the lore of GW2 (which would be awesome)?

ColinJohanson.2394:

Based on responses I’m not sure some of you read my post past the first paragraph….I’m agreeing with you, thus the:

“The one thing that’s really missing is the rewards to help make playing in these locations more even exciting and rewarding than they are now.”

And no, we’re not putting in a new currency, we have plenty of those

Well I definitely read it and find it full of hope. If indeed we receive relevant rewards for our time killing champions and veterans in the 30+ areas and you guys are making the blue and green items we find in the open world have new value (which I assume means a change in salvaging) that would certainly be a welcome change as most people don’t bother to salvage greens and the salvages from blue items even with the BLTC kits don’t offer anything better.

I hope salvaging blues and greens improves, it would make sense. I’d also love to see the chests from Champs to not be the kind that shows up on the ground but are more like the ones that popup from daily completion, or boss kills on the right side of the ui. That to me would be an improvement because I generally get the best loot from those with this persistant DR problem I keep having with the standard loot tables.

@Marcus Greythorne

Their direction actually hasn’t changed in the rewards it’s changing in where to get those rewards. It appears they are doing what we thought they’d do from the beginning and focus the most on open world rather then dungeons and that’s a great sign imo! It will take the focus off of the things that some of us feel should have never been placed in the game in the first place.

I only hope that while making these changes they find a way of fixing whatever is wrong with the algorithm because I’d hate to see these changes come about and then suddenly the drop rates of greens and blues fall into this pit of permaDR or whatever is happening with some of our accounts where we have to have 300% or higher MF just to get something to drop.

ColinJohanson.2394:

aspirine.6852:

But one solution would be to revert the changes that made orr so empty. And from there you can do the more exciting and rewarding stuff

It’s certainly one of the options we discussed, however it brings us right back to the initial problem we set out to solve, a large part of the player base was asking for more exciting and difficult open world content in our top end areas. The original version of Orr events were painfully easy, they didn’t scale well, mobs evaporated into thin-air and you had to race to even get a hit in before they died to get credit for kills.

The ideal balance point we’d like to have is with the scaling and more exciting encounters we have now, so it’s actually fun and at least remotely challenging to play there, but also rewarding as well. The reward systems we want to roll out to support those areas are part of a larger reward revamp and aren’t done yet, but are on their way and tie more strongly into the comprehensive system we’re trying to develop, thus the swap.

In regards to regular mobs hitting for insane damage, we did find a bug about a month ago causing many of them to scale way out of proportion, it has since been fixed and normal bosses in Orr should be doing damage on par with other bosses in the game. If you find any that are still nutso, please give us a shout, the intent is they should be fun/challenging, not one-hit-wonders.

Hope that helps give more insight into what we’re trying to do here, these changes are directly tied to feedback we’ve received. You don’t have to agree with them, but it’s important we explain why we’re doing them so folks understand the end goal, which I don’t believe we’ve reached yet until the rewards are there as well.

And now off to do that work thing, thanks for the feedback folks, as always keep it coming we really appreciate it!

On FC, I’m starting to see people come back to Orr once in a while. I’m not seeing the crowds at the smaller events like Penitent, but I’ve seen a couple of Melandru clears.

Based on what Colin is saying, I think we’re seeing growing pains. The changes have been introduced in pieces, rather than all at once. If they had to come piecemeal, this was the way to do it. If the rewards were put in first, imagine the outrage from players who got used to easy farms once the events were made more difficult.

As to issues with current mobs.

The Risen Plague Carrier’s produced by the Vet and higher Acolytes are still producing what-the-kitten moments as they explode before rendering. Any chance these can be removed and added back in once the culling issues are handled?

The Champion Risen Noble archetypes (used in the Defeat the Risen Worshipers in King’s Passage event in Malchor’s and at the skill point on Noose Road) use their symbol-teleport-pull ability on a very short cooldown. This creates problems for smaller groups, especially in King’s Passage, where the symbol is bigger than the passage. Given mob penchant for focusing on one character exclusively, the short CD means the target’s ability to mitigate returns much slower than the mob’s ability does. It might be better to give the Vet and higher nobles an additional (non AoE) move and reduce the symbol AoE/pull spam.

Risen Abominations’ new charge move hits characters who are well outside its path (out of the character’s melee range). If this is intended to represent some kind of shock wave, why is there no effect to indicate the difference between safe/not safe?

Finally, leashing. I’ve been in groups which tried to kill the Risen Worshiper by pulling it to the area where King’s Passage widens a little. It comes, fights, leashes, then returns. Players never leave combat, but the mob does and regens all its health. Champion Broodmothers also leash even if you are kiting them right on their leash point. I’ve seen the one in Malchor’s leash/regen and literally walk about ten feet before returning to fight.

How come everytime we hear “Oh we want things to be more fun and rewarding” by a Dev its usually followed up with nerf after nerf after nerf of said content stripping the area of all its fun and rewards? Hate to sound all negative and stuff but heard this speech many times and it always ends up with fun stripped away.

To be honest, I dont know if victory can be had here. Do we want face-roll content? This appeases farmers, but not the people that want to be enganged. Then they ramp up the difficulty and the farmers revolt. But the people that are looking for fun engaging combat suddenly have it. Yet, the content remains under-utilized.

I am in between both worlds. I always am actively seeking materials for a legendary, so a just reward is needed for me. But I do tire of mindlessly dropping wells and AOEing things down.

Is there a happy median? I dont know. They are trying but it could be all for nothing.

cesmode.4257:

To be honest, I dont know if victory can be had here. Do we want face-roll content? This appeases farmers, but not the people that want to be enganged. Then they ramp up the difficulty and the farmers revolt. But the people that are looking for fun engaging combat suddenly have it. Yet, the content remains under-utilized.

I am in between both worlds. I always am actively seeking materials for a legendary, so a just reward is needed for me. But I do tire of mindlessly dropping wells and AOEing things down.

Is there a happy median? I dont know. They are trying but it could be all for nothing.

Yes there is a happy median.

Create a spot for both farmers and a spot for challenging content.

We already have challenging content in the game. They include Arah (such as P4) as well as high level fractals.

How about farmers? What do we have to farm? Nothing.

Harbard.5738:

*Thanks for taking the time to answer this thread. *

I could care less about the new trinkets you guys are gonna add to orr and it bothers me immensely you have to focus so much in rewards to actually run an mmo. (just Ctrl+F the word “reward” here: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/colin-johanson-on-guild-wars-2-in-the-months-ahead/ for instance). Don’t let this game boil down to “reward systems”. Please. It has too much potential to just turn it into a skinner box.

But as long as the focus is fun mechanics, encounters and an active zone, go for it. Bit skeptical but I’m looking forward for the next 6 months.

I like this post. Ultimately, I think instrinsically fun content is its own reward. Why should we get laurels, commendations, materials, etc etc. Who cares as long as we are having fun? However, maybe this line of thought brings to light the elephant in the room that people are unwilling to talk about. Could it possibly be that GW2 content is just stale and is not what was promised?

The DEs were hyped up to be zone changing events. Either help the camp defend against centaurs or not. Next time you roll through the zone, it could look completely different than before, and you could have a completely different experience. Thats simply not true. Pass/Fail on the DEs have 0(Zero) impact on the surrounding environment. And are ultimately a bit…lackluster.

True, the DEs are difficult to code and are definately way better than the traditional style of questing. But if we are going for “fun” as its own reward, then the events and our choices and successes/failures better be apparent within the zone. If we failed, I better see that town get taken over, and the NPcs killed. If it is still left unchallenged, hordes of centaurs better be roaming around looking for the next camp. Not necessarily a new DE, but because the initial DE failed, the enemy centaurs should be expanding their new territory and it is on us to drive them back.

This holds true for any zone and I think players would quest and play in their favorite zones if: drops truely scaled with player level, difficulty truely scaled with player level, the general focus of the game shifted from extrinsic value to instrinsic, and the DEs actually mattered.

Vol.5241:

cesmode.4257:

To be honest, I dont know if victory can be had here. Do we want face-roll content? This appeases farmers, but not the people that want to be enganged. Then they ramp up the difficulty and the farmers revolt. But the people that are looking for fun engaging combat suddenly have it. Yet, the content remains under-utilized.

I am in between both worlds. I always am actively seeking materials for a legendary, so a just reward is needed for me. But I do tire of mindlessly dropping wells and AOEing things down.

Is there a happy median? I dont know. They are trying but it could be all for nothing.

Yes there is a happy median.

Create a spot for both farmers and a spot for challenging content.

We already have challenging content in the game. They include Arah (such as P4) as well as high level fractals.

How about farmers? What do we have to farm? Nothing.

What about the guy that wants some difficult content, but be rewarded for it just as much.
If I spend 10 minutes beating on vets and champs, I would like to get something like 2-3 dusts, 2-3 armor scales, 2-3 bones, etc. Vs 10 minutes of simple killing.

Wouldnt that be the ultimate goal?

I do also think that the events themselves are becoming generic.

While it is less of the Kill X Collect Y variety, GW2 has created a new set of generic…content(s).

-Defend X place against Y people
-Escort Z NPC
-Protect A NPC for B Minutes while they perform C tasks.

Its becoming generic.

Thanks for the info Colin. I have one suggestion if it is doable from a programming perspective.

Tie reward amounts/quality in Orr to how many temples we have unlocked.

The simplest current mechanic to use would be an automatic zone-wide buff that stacks magic find a percentage for each temple held, pad it with an additional percentage if a player actually participates in successfully taking or defending the temple.

I’d also recommend a guaranteed exotic from completing the assault on Arah, but ONLY if all temples are player controlled. My thoughts lie along the lines of a guaranteed rare with a sliding percentage chance at the exotic, based on number of temples held, that totals 100% with all of them. This reward should be in place for the defense event also.

On the difficulty front, on top of scaling based on number of players present it would be nice to see the defense events scale based on how many times the players have defended them. If you have that capability it would be quite cool. An added incentive here could be another bonus reward for holding the temples/Arah through multiple defenses.

As a player I’d like to see a precursor/or a precursor ticket drop from the Arah defense event IF and only IF players can hold it for an impressive number of defenses against ever increasing odds. It should be bloody difficult to do but not impossible. This could lead to an opportunity to show server pride in PVE through high numbers of Arah defenses.

ColinJohanson.2394:

aspirine.6852:

But one solution would be to revert the changes that made orr so empty. And from there you can do the more exciting and rewarding stuff

It’s certainly one of the options we discussed, however it brings us right back to the initial problem we set out to solve, a large part of the player base was asking for more exciting and difficult open world content in our top end areas. The original version of Orr events were painfully easy, they didn’t scale well, mobs evaporated into thin-air and you had to race to even get a hit in before they died to get credit for kills.

The ideal balance point we’d like to have is with the scaling and more exciting encounters we have now, so it’s actually fun and at least remotely challenging to play there, but also rewarding as well. The reward systems we want to roll out to support those areas are part of a larger reward revamp and aren’t done yet, but are on their way and tie more strongly into the comprehensive system we’re trying to develop, thus the swap.

In regards to regular mobs hitting for insane damage, we did find a bug about a month ago causing many of them to scale way out of proportion, it has since been fixed and normal bosses in Orr should be doing damage on par with other bosses in the game. If you find any that are still nutso, please give us a shout, the intent is they should be fun/challenging, not one-hit-wonders.

Hope that helps give more insight into what we’re trying to do here, these changes are directly tied to feedback we’ve received. You don’t have to agree with them, but it’s important we explain why we’re doing them so folks understand the end goal, which I don’t believe we’ve reached yet until the rewards are there as well.

And now off to do that work thing, thanks for the feedback folks, as always keep it coming we really appreciate it!

Hi Colin. While not very challenging, those events were fun & rewarding. As of now these events/area are neither funny, nor rewarding and not even challenging or exciting. They were quite “dead” for some time and the recent change with the timers have made the issue much worse.

My suggestion is to have the best of both worlds:

Penitent/Shelter/Jofast/Plinx/Etc: Revert them. Make them highly farmable events like they were. Simple & Rewarding! Given time you can also make other areas like Frostgorge, ML & SoD have these kind of events to spread the population a bit)

Temples/Gates of Arah/Risen King/Etc: Keep the challenge here. These should be rare events events that require some coordination, have exciting mechanics and keep players on their toes. Up the rewards a bit (some unique rewards maybe?) to entice people to do them and get rid of those silly thing that are not challenging…just annoying (Champion Spider/Lyssa’s Illusions/Champion Chickens).

With this you would please both crouds. You’ll have simple content for farmers and casuals while also having challeging content for hardcore players that rewards skill & coordination.

EnemyCrusher.7324:

All areas of the game except Orr have kills, veteran kills, and event completion daily achievements. If we want players in Orr more often, it should be included in the dailies like the other areas.

This is exactly what we need to do to get people into these areas. Create a few more specific dailies. Maybe even something like, “Capture the Temple of Lyssa”, “Lead the northern assault on Orr”, etc. I think dailies would be an excellent way of focusing players in certain areas, but as they are right now they pull people away from high level areas.

A couple of weeks ago my guild, which is all of five people, were attempting to do some of the meta events in Orr, but it was just a bit too rough. There was literally no one else in the zone, so it was all up to us. We would make it about halfway through events before getting pushed back, and while I enjoy a challenge, I was frustrated with the lack of other players.

As for Southsun; we may have been given a few more things to do, but it still feels extremely thin on content. The rewards for the meta event are the most boring skins in the game. Considering that there is a huge island, there is actually very little to do in the water. Can’t karka swim? We still have no real answers about their origins either. That’s just me ranting though, :P

cesmode.4257:

The DEs were hyped up to be zone changing events. Either help the camp defend against centaurs or not. Next time you roll through the zone, it could look completely different than before, and you could have a completely different experience. Thats simply not true.

Yeah I think a saw like 2 bridges and a pipeline being built here and there. And that was a SICK joke compared to the hype even if you only bought into like 50% of it lol. It was beyond marketing BS it’s just criminal lol. And the more trinkets they roll out the more they are screaming “We can’t make a fun game! So we’ll start getting gimmicky!”.

But STILL, the mechanic DE being what it is, is still a lot of fun and it could be more used. I do have fun with them still and i see alot of potential. EVEN if everything is just capture the camp and escort this squad if they all ended into another event that would take you somewhere or to some boss or conquer land and be more frequent, it would make DEs even better.

Finding cool events, having cool stuff happen while I explore. Playing across the entire map with everyone, not alone, free of farmers locking down DE progression. Thats my reward.

cesmode.4257:

Vol.5241:

cesmode.4257:

To be honest, I dont know if victory can be had here. Do we want face-roll content? This appeases farmers, but not the people that want to be enganged. Then they ramp up the difficulty and the farmers revolt. But the people that are looking for fun engaging combat suddenly have it. Yet, the content remains under-utilized.

I am in between both worlds. I always am actively seeking materials for a legendary, so a just reward is needed for me. But I do tire of mindlessly dropping wells and AOEing things down.

Is there a happy median? I dont know. They are trying but it could be all for nothing.

Yes there is a happy median.

Create a spot for both farmers and a spot for challenging content.

We already have challenging content in the game. They include Arah (such as P4) as well as high level fractals.

How about farmers? What do we have to farm? Nothing.

What about the guy that wants some difficult content, but be rewarded for it just as much.
If I spend 10 minutes beating on vets and champs, I would like to get something like 2-3 dusts, 2-3 armor scales, 2-3 bones, etc. Vs 10 minutes of simple killing.

Wouldnt that be the ultimate goal?

In that scenario, where both events start off equal in rewards, people would flock towards the veterans since those don’t die as easily (and thus becoming easier to tag).

So the most ‘difficult’ content becomes the easiest

Orr is the ugliest, most annoying area in the game. I’m all for challenging content, but this news is pretty depressing. I’ve already been bored in game waiting for something decent to be added (besides the mini side quest psuedo-expansion content that has been drip released to us) and this doesn’t really help my outlook.

ColinJohanson.2394:

aspirine.6852:

But one solution would be to revert the changes that made orr so empty. And from there you can do the more exciting and rewarding stuff

It’s certainly one of the options we discussed, however it brings us right back to the initial problem we set out to solve, a large part of the player base was asking for more exciting and difficult open world content in our top end areas. The original version of Orr events were painfully easy, they didn’t scale well, mobs evaporated into thin-air and you had to race to even get a hit in before they died to get credit for kills.

The ideal balance point we’d like to have is with the scaling and more exciting encounters we have now, so it’s actually fun and at least remotely challenging to play there, but also rewarding as well. The reward systems we want to roll out to support those areas are part of a larger reward revamp and aren’t done yet, but are on their way and tie more strongly into the comprehensive system we’re trying to develop, thus the swap.

In regards to regular mobs hitting for insane damage, we did find a bug about a month ago causing many of them to scale way out of proportion, it has since been fixed and normal bosses in Orr should be doing damage on par with other bosses in the game. If you find any that are still nutso, please give us a shout, the intent is they should be fun/challenging, not one-hit-wonders.

Hope that helps give more insight into what we’re trying to do here, these changes are directly tied to feedback we’ve received. You don’t have to agree with them, but it’s important we explain why we’re doing them so folks understand the end goal, which I don’t believe we’ve reached yet until the rewards are there as well.

And now off to do that work thing, thanks for the feedback folks, as always keep it coming we really appreciate it!

TL;DR version being “We’ve put the cart before the horse.”?

Where are all these people clamoring for more challenging content? Most Orr events are untouched. It is as desolate as expected for a place like Orr so at least it helps with immersion.

Then we have the karka queen. The timer on gw2stuff.com provides a very convenient way to track how often people are doing that one. For the majority of all the servers(both NA and EU combined) the last time that event was done is in the double digits. Some are even in the triple digits. One is near or over 200 hours. That is over a week that the event hasn’t been done. The usual excuse of ‘no reward’ doesn’t even apply to that event since it DOES provide 2 rares. Personally I don’t think the reward for that event is worth the effort either but I am not one of those clamoring for these so call “challenging events” either.

The bug has certainly NOT been fixed, at least not for Lyssa. The gorilla is still easily a one-shot. Why does the champion gorilla have more HP AND hit harder than the legendary priestess which is supposed to be the primary target? Lyssa can be fun with a small amount of people but once it scales up it is just random one shots and gorillas jumping on you from behind.

There are also no meaningful tactics you can apply there. In THEORY it would be a smart move to go and destroy the trebs so people don’t have get pelted with all those AoEs and get forced into the tiny area but they respawn so fast it becomes a pointless waste of time.

As for reverting changes to the events to make them farmable. That would be a mistake. Yes it would “put more people in Orr” but what good would that do when those people are just sitting in a few specific spots in the fairly large maps and not doing much else?

ColinJohanson.2394:

We’d also like to add more value and use to blue/green items, so things like killing vets feels more rewarding when those type of items drop when doing those events in Orr as well.

They HAD value at launch.

It was that awesome 1-in-4 chance of upgrading through the Mystic Forge reroll that you guys NERFED within the first 2 weeks but never included in the patch notes.

Please…. please stop this Rewards/Grinding cycle and padding out the grind with RNG compulsive gambling. Fix the bugs first. So many temples are always getting glitched. And too much of the content in Straights of devastation is IMPOSSIBLE for solo’s and duo’s to ever complete (like Brassclaw landing) even though the chains leading up to them all give solo players a sense that they’re supposed to be to to keep going with it.

Do you have any idea how demoralizing that can be? If all this content is supposed to be groups-only…. then either make it happen LESS OFTEN and greatly increase the time between resets so it doesn’t have to be repeated and constantly guarded around the clock (which also means you can raise the rewards for it). …. OR … have all your underpopulated servers Merge into the same “district” in these zones so that there’s always a stable population capable of keeping these DE’s working like they did 8 months ago

DE’s were your #1 sales pitch for this game.
And right now they’re in a DESERTED STATE.
Therefore your entire GAME feels like it’s in a deserted state too.
Everyone’s just COF’ing instead b/c it’s a magic-money printing machine w/o the R.N.G.

ColinJohanson.2394:

It’s certainly one of the options we discussed, however it brings us right back to the initial problem we set out to solve, a large part of the player base was asking for more exciting and difficult open world content in our top end areas. The original version of Orr events were painfully easy, they didn’t scale well, mobs evaporated into thin-air and you had to race to even get a hit in before they died to get credit for kills.

The ideal balance point we’d like to have is with the scaling and more exciting encounters we have now, so it’s actually fun and at least remotely challenging to play there, but also rewarding as well. The reward systems we want to roll out to support those areas are part of a larger reward revamp and aren’t done yet, but are on their way and tie more strongly into the comprehensive system we’re trying to develop, thus the swap.

In regards to regular mobs hitting for insane damage, we did find a bug about a month ago causing many of them to scale way out of proportion, it has since been fixed and normal bosses in Orr should be doing damage on par with other bosses in the game. If you find any that are still nutso, please give us a shout, the intent is they should be fun/challenging, not one-hit-wonders.

Hope that helps give more insight into what we’re trying to do here, these changes are directly tied to feedback we’ve received. You don’t have to agree with them, but it’s important we explain why we’re doing them so folks understand the end goal, which I don’t believe we’ve reached yet until the rewards are there as well.

And now off to do that work thing, thanks for the feedback folks, as always keep it coming we really appreciate it!

I’m not sure the “more challenge” crowd really wanted to have to pound on extra vets for less return. As such it might have been an idea to roll out this challenging new content as and when you actually had your reward systems ready and culling sorted, not before.

There are still scaling issues, getting hit for 48K and above in one shot from an unseen source (thanks to culling) at the Lyssa event is not unkown. People keep pointing out the issues in the dynamic events thread on the topic.

Out of interest, is there any reason why we could not see temporary MF/GF buff NPCs in Orr (and back in Southsun) whilst we wait for these up coming changes?

Please at least nerf the champion wraiths. Maybe their lifesteal mechanic would be good in a dungeon where people are more organized, but get 50+ pug people together during temple runs and at least one guy isn’t going to listen. Every day at 5PM server time the NSP server does a temple run starting at Meddler’s if you want to come see in person the headache these guys are. The only way we get around them during Grenth is to let them despawn, but it takes several minutes to convince everyone to get the heck away from the wraith and stop attacking it.

I would personally love if you guys undid the nerfs to the pent/shelter camps. There used to be a small community of people who would farm this place together. With the way that loot is handled in this game (where multiple people get kill credit for attacking) I kind of thought that’s what farming in this game would be like; a small group of people farming together. COF path 1 is more profitable than pent/shelter farming ever was, but it was WAY more enjoyable IMO.

Rexx.1805:

Hi Colin. While not very challenging, those events were fun & rewarding. As of now these events/area are neither funny, nor rewarding and not even challenging or exciting. They were quite “dead” for some time and the recent change with the timers have made the issue much worse.

This sums up what I think of Orr very well.

Plus from my perspective, Orr is the most ugly and bland area in the entire game. The mobs are uninspired and while zooming on them you can see they don’t have the same level of quality as most mobs of the game, they look unfinished.

For me, Orr is the most annoying zone I ever played in any mmo and they need something big to make me come back.

The zone is the end game and it has strengths. I remember spending an hour on an event between Cursed Shores and Malchor’s Leap the first time I got there and that was really fun and challenging with a small group, but I got nothing out of it which gave me no reason to go back to it once the fun was gone.

What this means to me is that scaling is an issue that needs to be fixed to have fun no matter the size of the group, you can’t simply cross your fingers hoping just enough players show up. Then we need good rewards to repeat events once the fun is gun because let’s be honest you can play for fun, but after 10 times the fun s most likely gone and you need something to keep playing. My preference is something very hard, very long and very rewarding almost like a raid… For example if you do a chain of events you get some good loot at the end and the more events you did the better the chances of exotics are. Of course, that’s assuming bosses aren’t just spamfests…

Sadly tough, it still won’t fix a big problem for many of us which is how terrible the entire zone looks and feels. WE NEED a new 80 zone. I have personally been hoping for months that AN would create a level 80 zone passed Frostgorge sound where we get closer to Jormag because for me the lore surrounding Jormag is better and the icy zone just look amazing compared to Orr.

On a side note, we need to address some serious balance too. I get an awful feeling when you see some classes farm so easily simply because they have better aoe mechanics or happen to have overpowered skills. Deep down inside, I cry every time I am forced to do the tag race. What if mobs spawned during events gave no loot and you gave way more rewards at the end ? This would also fix the issue when going support and getting nothing.

Somebody else mentioned ‘phasing’ for the Orr zones like we saw in GW1 and the ‘Winds of Change’ series and I thought that was a great idea. Making new and potentially more difficult events is all well and fine, but moreover it seems to me we should be seeing some of the effects of destroying Zhaitan by now. It almost makes that final victory seem pointless and empty.

In introducing some measure of phasing the zones, you could then have different events you could write from scratch, keeping things new, fresh and interesting without sacrificing difficulty or the ‘end-game’ feel you intended for the areas. Yes, absolutely fighting in Orr shouldn’t be done yet, but I think more than anything, a sense of progression with nearly a year on the game would be a great experience. I’d imagine there’d be more fighting to do, but seeing a little bit of the former Orr trying to peek out of the darkness would be amazing.

I totally see what the Dev is saying that they are going to revamp ORR to make temple chains better rewards etc, and that’s great I guess if you are online in time for when a temple event is occurring, if you are at school/work to bad you miss out,

They have acknowledged the problem that ORR had but completely side stepped the situation about NO LOOT dropping at all, its all well and good to say that these changes are coming in the 2nd half of the year, but your players are leaving the game NOW because they cannot farm/get the mats/gear they want from your so called end game zones,

There is no point in trying to fix the rewards for events, if everywhere else is no drops at all, its beyond stupid,

I understand that you do not want it to go back to the old way but for the love of god, put the loot back into normal enemies in ORR,

Me and a guild mate cleared all of Straights, Mal’s Leap and Shore 2 days ago, ( on new toons ) we did events etc as we came across them, other than the zone completion rewards I got 1 RARE drop and 5 T6 mats out of the 3 zones, we also did frostgorge sound last night and I got 1 rare, 0 T6 mats, this was even with about 150% MF, its beyond a joke, where is my incentive to tell my friends etc to go pick this game up and play it.

Infact a few friends that I got into the game from the trails etc, have no left the game because they cannot farm the mats they need for there gear they want, friends take other friends with them, its not all about $$$ u know.

ColinJohanson.2394:

In regards to regular mobs hitting for insane damage, we did find a bug about a month ago causing many of them to scale way out of proportion, it has since been fixed and normal bosses in Orr should be doing damage on par with other bosses in the game. If you find any that are still nutso, please give us a shout, the intent is they should be fun/challenging, not one-hit-wonders.

I wonder if this also affected other areas? I know you changed one of the events near Teqatl, where Krait attack asuran energy nodes. Now you can see veteran and even champion mobs there if enough players show up. The vets and especially the champions have a tendency to dish out huge damage. I think one of these is through a ground AOE that would down you in two ticks, or less if you are below full health. It certainly makes the event a lot more challenging when half the crew gets downed by one attack.

Challenging mobs should be tougher, i.e. higher armor and hp, and have attacks that are a threat, but don’t insta-gib players. AoEs would need to be tuned to deal damage to more than 5 people (if monster are limited by this), though not in a spiky fashion.

It’s one thing in a 5 man dungeon to have to spot a tell from a boss, but it’s nearly impossible in the fireworks 20 people will set off to even see the champ mob, much less any tells.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hope that helps give more insight into what we’re trying to do here, these changes are directly tied to feedback we’ve received. You don’t have to agree with them, but it’s important we explain why we’re doing them so folks understand the end goal, which I don’t believe we’ve reached yet until the rewards are there as well.

And now off to do that work thing, thanks for the feedback folks, as always keep it coming we really appreciate it!

Thanks so much for coming and talking to us!

Honestly, I don’t think the basic problem is monetary rewards. The problem is there isn’t anything besides the monetary rewards.

Cosmetic aspects of the game aren’t well integrated into the gameplay, and we don’t have tools to set and strive for cosmetic goals. Farming is fun, but I’d like to have other options at the end-game.

Take minis – it’s hard to see them while running and fighting, and it’s easy to accidentally deposit them. Frustrating + useless means that I’m don’t care about minis. Giving minis more functionality (pet contests, mini displays, loot pickup, pokemon-style minigame, etc), making minis more prominent while in Tyria, or at least making them less irritating, would be more fun and rewarding.

Same for skins. Discovering different skins is difficult, and experimenting with outfits can be expensive. We could use a better way to model complete outfits, and definitely some way to know where we should go look for the skins we want. Give players the tools to find and strive for the perfect outfit.

Town clothes can’t be used in 90% of the game. Better integration here would help a lot. Guards that insist we disarm before entering a shop? City NPCs giving different dialogue depending on town outfit? Option to equip town clothes automatically when entering a town? There’s all kinds of options. Right now town clothes feel like a waste of time and money.

TL;DR There’s nothing much besides monetary rewards for people to aim for. Comestic aspects seem disconnected and unimportant. Expanding and integrating them would make the game more rewarding and give people something to do besides farm.