Guild Wars 2

the problem is reward:
when it was basically zerging it was very rewarding for just spamming #1 with not much of effort.
now that its require much more team work and co-ordination and skill, it is way less rewarding.
somebody should ask anet whether they understand meaning and concept of balance?!

Sunshine.4680:

maha.7902:

So you have a choice.

Run Arah p2 in 20 minutes, get 5 champ bags4 boss chests, 3.31g and 26 tokens.

OR

Run the pavilion boss event for 8 minutes, get 6 (?) champ bags and some karma.

6 champ bags? What? Those champions never dropped bags just the reward bag at the end and that has 2 bags in it not 6 and it takes much much longer than 8 minutes.

I’m offering the comparison of basically the most ideal blitz reward and time so as opposed to just doing Arah p2. Most of the time it takes a lot longer, so yeah it’s more like 30 minutes for 2 champ bags.

maha.7902:

Sunshine.4680:

maha.7902:

So you have a choice.

Run Arah p2 in 20 minutes, get 5 champ bags4 boss chests, 3.31g and 26 tokens.

OR

Run the pavilion boss event for 8 minutes, get 6 (?) champ bags and some karma.

6 champ bags? What? Those champions never dropped bags just the reward bag at the end and that has 2 bags in it not 6 and it takes much much longer than 8 minutes.

I’m offering the comparison of basically the most ideal blitz reward and time so as opposed to just doing Arah p2. Most of the time it takes a lot longer, so yeah it’s more like 30 minutes for 2 champ bags.

I once had a cat named maha

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

Dusty Moon.4382:

Harper.4173:

Dusty Moon.4382:

Aegis.9724:

GW2 is DESIGNED from the ground to favor zerg mechanics, due to how dynamic events work. Putting counter-mechanics in it, like requiring organization, massive scaling, no loot/xp will always end frustrating everyone.

Even zerg events that require coordination and that i consider fun and well implemented fall in this trap, like tequatl – Very well designed IF you have good commanders/ people who know what they’re doing, which means parking in the map 1 hour before the spawn, horrible and hopeless fight if you dont….which goes against the very philosophy of gw2.

Honestly, the only people i know who seem to be enjoyin the pavillion are on this forum. Everyone in my 2 guilds, all my friends and everyone in map chat HATES it.

The mechanics DO NOT favor zergs – it is the players that feel that way. The players get lazy and just go to for the fastest route possible – which is zerg DPS. Saying the mechanics favor zerg is just a silly, uninformed statement.

With Tequatl and the 3-headed wurm (as were some of the Temples and higher level bosses), it was the start of more difficult mechanics that need coordination and communication, which is what GW2 was all about. After all, all the races are cooperating with each other to defeat the Elder Dragons.

If your guild doesn’t like a challenge then they don’t have to play the Pavillion because you need to actually coordinate and communicate, not zerg mindlessly. Obviously, they couldn’t deal with good coordinated WvW either because they just want to zerg, spamming one skill.

People wanted the game to be harder and now that they get it, they are complaining that they can’t be mindless and stand in one place spamming one skill.

I say GJ A.Net!!

The pavilion is harder now than it was last year – if that’s good or bad is debatable.

The pavilion is now a complete waste of time compared to last year because the rewards are so bad I don’t see why anyone would bother to put in the time and coordination it takes to get gold reward (more than once anyway).

The bottom line is that while last year the Crown Pavilion was hailed as one of the most awesome features added, with people going there and enjoying it for the whole duration of its stay this year’s pavilion is a ghost town.

People don’t do it because there’s no point. Last year you could get T6 drops, champ boxes and even chests after a boss was killed.
It was fun to team up with people and get loot together.

This year you have to coordinate a LOT of people and you’ll get what? Nothing good. The gold reward isn’t worth the 8 minutes spent do get it.

Might as well do a dungeon path.

It is a game, do they HAVE to give you a reward every time? I think it is ludicrous to think that way. In RL, you don’t get rewarded every time you do something. You are starting to sound like this…

If there is no reward for a task in a game then what is the point. The dopamine fix you will get for repeating something without any reward shrinks immensely every time it is repeated for most people. In competitive games there is a dopamine reward if you win or even if its a close match and you do very well but lose. So in that case I can understand repeating the activity for no reward. But to do something in a MMORPG video game more than once just for the sake of doing it for little or no reward feels like a waste of time that could be used more productively doing something else in the game. Maybe like doing something that does give a reward.

Have you ever done crossword puzzles or any games like that and they are games? The reward is actually finishing the puzzle. I guess people need to feel that they have to be given a shiney every time they do something – Pavlov’s Dog syndrome…..

This is the ‘Entitled’ Syndrome – feeling that everything HAS to have a reward. It doesn’t – finishing something is reward on it’s own merit.

Dusty Moon.4382:

It is a game, do they HAVE to give you a reward every time? I think it is ludicrous to think that way. In RL, you don’t get rewarded every time you do something. You are starting to sound like this…

Thing is this is a game not RL

in RL I have to wash dishes every day of my life – do I get rewarded?
NO- in fact I detest washing dishes because they breed ..

lots of things in RL are like this and because it is we play games for fun.

And as video games go- it certainly doesn’t have to give me a reward every time but it should still reward my time, either by being fun, progressing a story or by improving your character or skill

Face it many of us have been here since betas- we have been there and done that several times over x 1000

fun is also subjective- being punished for something that was
a) fun for some and
b) rewarding
c) social in an MMO

is not a way to make your long term players happy

Dusty Moon.4382:

Have you ever done crossword puzzles or any games like that and they are games? The reward is actually finishing the puzzle. I guess people need to feel that they have to be given a shiney every time they do something – Pavlov’s Dog syndrome…..

This is the ‘Entitled’ Syndrome – feeling that everything HAS to have a reward. It doesn’t – finishing something is reward on it’s own merit.

If you play chess or do cross words- every time you play a game or do a puzzle is a challenge of your skill.
that is your reward
How rewarding would that be if you do exactly the same puzzle for 2 years or play the same chess game very day?
All people like to be rewarded for their efforts
(and you are using Pavlov out of context)

The problem is that I also see lots of people arguing this:

1) We’re tired of doing the same thing over and over!
2) Why did you change Pavilion!?! It should be exactly the same as last year!

Let’s say every successful completion of Boss Blitz offered… 10g for Bronze Reward Level, 25g for Silver Reward Level, Ascended box for Gold Reward Level. Guaranteed.

How many would be complaining about the change? Zero.

How many would be complaining that you can’t just zerg around? Zero.

How many would be complaining that the event doesn’t have obvious enough goals? Zero.

There are many issues with the way this event has been built. Sadly, the player satisfaction for an event is so highly tied to rewards, that can make the discussion of the underlying content or systems very challenging.

timmyf.1490:

The problem is that I also see lots of people arguing this:

1) We’re tired of doing the same thing over and over!
2) Why did you change Pavilion!?! It should be exactly the same as last year!

Let’s say every successful completion of Boss Blitz offered… 10g for Bronze Reward Level, 25g for Silver Reward Level, Ascended box for Gold Reward Level. Guaranteed.

How many would be complaining about the change? Zero.

How many would be complaining that you can’t just zerg around? Zero.

How many would be complaining that the event doesn’t have obvious enough goals? Zero.

There are many issues with the way this event has been built. Sadly, the player satisfaction for an event is so highly tied to rewards, that can make the discussion of the underlying content or systems very challenging.

They said China and NA/EU would be exactly the same. A.net saw people leveling characters fast in that area and they don’t want that.

Just like at the beginning of the game, when players were complaining that areas were too hard and that was until the players learned HOW to play those areas. That is all it is now. People EXPECTED ANOTHER CHAMP FARM and they didn’t get it.

People wanted a less kittened game and they have it now. Now the same people are complaining.

Dusty Moon.4382:

It is a game, do they HAVE to give you a reward every time? I think it is ludicrous to think that way. In RL, you don’t get rewarded every time you do something. You are starting to sound like this…

Getting stuff after you kill monsters is the cornerstone of MMO gaming. Is this concept really that hard to grasp?

Dakota.4591:

You want an anti-zerg mechanic? Hard-cap the Pavilion at, say, 40-50 players each. The only way to keep people from zerging is to actively prevent them from forming up in the first place.

/thread

Prophet.6257:

Fanboys call every complaint QQ don’t they?

It doesn’t matter now anyway. I got other farms I do and don’t plan on posting them on these forums. Anet has proven they want to limit the amount of gold in the game. Fine. Inflation sucks but so does being broke.

Yes, because the point of this game is to farm gold…..good luck to you.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Yes, because the point of this game is to farm gold…..good luck to you.

So just curious
what is your goal in game?
( and don’t answer fun unless you want to be very specific about what you consider fun)
do you need the TP for that?
mmmm

I wish Anet put some kind of lobbying system for each boss or something..Giving us content with zerg restrictions is painful to organize. Those maps who havesuccessfully organized are a minority IMO. Just gonna do the APs and I’m out of that place.

timmyf.1490:

Sunshine.4680:

Kalendraf.9521:

Lishtenbird.2814:

So, paying 50s-1g to get back 50s-1g after 30 minutes of frustrating fighting with zerg-minded people who cannot read boss description is fun?

Okay…

Only 30 minutes? Consider yourself very lucky. I was in an instance last night that took over 90 minutes to finish a blitz, and it wasn’t due to people simply not understanding the mechanics.

Don’t tell timmy that, it seems where he is from they do it in less then 8 minutes with everyone getting their chevos etc.. it must be the land of milk and honey where the streets are paved with gold and people only die from old age surrounded by loved ones.

I never said that! Mine took about 45 minutes. I spent much of that time trying to get people not to zerg and was told repeatedly to shove it up my kitten.

I’m just saying that once all the people who showed up to farm figure out that farming isn’t an option, they’ll leave. The remaining people will trend more toward caring about completing the event and will have more success.

And you don’t see a problem for the game in that? An event where, let’s be honest about it, the MAJORITY of people leave after realizing what it is?

Morrigan.2809:

Brother Grimm.5176:

Yes, because the point of this game is to farm gold…..good luck to you.

So just curious
what is your goal in game?
( and don’t answer fun unless you want to be very specific about what you consider fun)
do you need the TP for that?
mmmm

I can’t answer for Grimm, but I can answer for myself! My goal is a couple parts:

1) To have fun!

1a) I enjoy lore. Not to a huge extent, but I’m always up for learning more about the world. The Living Story has been a bit of a disappointment in this respect, but I do very much like the biconics. I’m a total sap for Kasjory, so I could (and do) sit around and listen to them chat to each other.

1b) I like fast-paced mid-tier difficulty content. I enjoy the combat when I have to do more than auto-attack. I do not enjoy spending 30-45 minutes “preparing” for fights. Examples of content I like are most of the explorable dungeon paths, Fractals in the 11-19 range, certain LW content. I have not yet enjoyed Tequatl or the Three-Headed Wurm as I find the long prep time to be horrifically boring. I play about 3 hours/night and 45 minutes of standing does not equal fun to me.

1c) I enjoy socializing with my guildmates and, occasionally, other people. We’re usually on Teamspeak yapping about something. I’m – I’ll admit it – usually drinking bourbon. We’re a small guild – 5-15 active per night – so we know each other on a pretty personal level. Most of us consist of unmarried couples in their 20s or 30s.

1d) I enjoy accomplishing mid-term goals. I try to give myself goals and subdivide them. Right now, for example, I’m trying to get all my crafting to 500. I’m at 4/6 with the other two at 473 and 478. Since I also enjoy longer-term goals, I’m trying to do this at as low of a gold-cost as possible, I’m trying to get inscriptions/insignias from dungeon armor salvages. That’s my current slow spot. I probably run 2 or 3 dungeon paths per day on average, so this can be a long process. (Some days I’ll run 8 paths. Many days I’ll run 0.)

1e) I enjoy accomplishing long-term goals. Back during the Marionette release, I got my first Legendary, the Moot! I’m not a huge fan of farming or grinding, so this was a Pretty Big Deal for me. Right now I’m also working toward #2 – either Bolt (stretch goal) or the Minstrel (more realistic goal). I figure I’ll toss a few dozen rare Swords per month in the MF and hope I get Zap while working on common components for both Legendaries. If I don’t get Zap by the time I finish my Gift of Fortune, I’ll probably just switch to Minstrel.

crazy.9083:

timmyf.1490:

Sunshine.4680:

Kalendraf.9521:

Lishtenbird.2814:

So, paying 50s-1g to get back 50s-1g after 30 minutes of frustrating fighting with zerg-minded people who cannot read boss description is fun?

Okay…

Only 30 minutes? Consider yourself very lucky. I was in an instance last night that took over 90 minutes to finish a blitz, and it wasn’t due to people simply not understanding the mechanics.

Don’t tell timmy that, it seems where he is from they do it in less then 8 minutes with everyone getting their chevos etc.. it must be the land of milk and honey where the streets are paved with gold and people only die from old age surrounded by loved ones.

I never said that! Mine took about 45 minutes. I spent much of that time trying to get people not to zerg and was told repeatedly to shove it up my kitten.

I’m just saying that once all the people who showed up to farm figure out that farming isn’t an option, they’ll leave. The remaining people will trend more toward caring about completing the event and will have more success.

And you don’t see a problem for the game in that? An event where, let’s be honest about it, the MAJORITY of people leave after realizing what it is?

A minority of people do 40+ Fractals.
A minority of people solo Arah explorable paths.
A minority of people play T1 WvW.
A minority of people are max-rank PvP.
A minority of people have read all 3 GW novels and care deeply about the lore.
A minority of people have Ascended armor and/or care to get it.

Just because content is not built for the majority of the game does not make it bad content.

I’m not saying Boss Blitz is good content – I think it’s okay, not great – but saying that most people don’t want to do it is not the same thing as saying it’s bad.

Here in the United States, Bud Light is by far the most popular beer. I don’t consider it good beer. I certainly would never choose to drink it. I consider it inferior.

Tastes vary. Goals vary.

Soloing a dungeon is not an option, it’s 5-man content, but I agree with the others.

Valento.9852:

Soloing a dungeon is not an option, it’s 5-man content, but I agree with the others.

Thanks! I’d say a majority of people don’t 5-man Arah explorable either. ;-)

Different people find fun in different types of content. Living World content doesn’t appeal to everybody all the time. That’s okay!

If you want super-rewarding yet not-at-all-challenging content, I’m not sure I’m going to feel all that bad for you.

I love SAB puzzles… that’s why I want it back, that’s the kind of content I personally like and it’s somehow rewarding (even repeating it wasn’t all that bad because it’s kitten hilarious!).

Valento.9852:

I love SAB puzzles… that’s why I want it back, that’s the kind of content I personally like and it’s somehow rewarding (even repeating it wasn’t all that bad because it’s kitten hilarious!).

Oh totally. I loved SAB World 1. I was really busy with real life when World 2 came out and I never had a chance to play it. I was so bummed.

Let’s see now, 30+ minutes of ZERGING boss mobs who drop nothing themselves for a end of event reward not even equal to ONE run of the now deceased Queensdale Champ Train. And after PAYING to get the event started. Plus more Elites than you can shake a stick at that rarely drop anything. Someone please explain to me how this is better than the way the pavilion was last time.

However, I am impressed with some of the things Anet’s done to make those fights a challenge, like the Centaur stampede that you must evade while fighting the Centaur boss.

To give an idea of how impressed I am about this, I wont be wasting my time doing it again. I’d rather get spanked by Theives, Mesmers, and Necros in PvP, it’s more entertaining.

Dusty Moon.4382:

Harper.4173:

Dusty Moon.4382:

Aegis.9724:

GW2 is DESIGNED from the ground to favor zerg mechanics, due to how dynamic events work. Putting counter-mechanics in it, like requiring organization, massive scaling, no loot/xp will always end frustrating everyone.

Even zerg events that require coordination and that i consider fun and well implemented fall in this trap, like tequatl – Very well designed IF you have good commanders/ people who know what they’re doing, which means parking in the map 1 hour before the spawn, horrible and hopeless fight if you dont….which goes against the very philosophy of gw2.

Honestly, the only people i know who seem to be enjoyin the pavillion are on this forum. Everyone in my 2 guilds, all my friends and everyone in map chat HATES it.

The mechanics DO NOT favor zergs – it is the players that feel that way. The players get lazy and just go to for the fastest route possible – which is zerg DPS. Saying the mechanics favor zerg is just a silly, uninformed statement.

With Tequatl and the 3-headed wurm (as were some of the Temples and higher level bosses), it was the start of more difficult mechanics that need coordination and communication, which is what GW2 was all about. After all, all the races are cooperating with each other to defeat the Elder Dragons.

If your guild doesn’t like a challenge then they don’t have to play the Pavillion because you need to actually coordinate and communicate, not zerg mindlessly. Obviously, they couldn’t deal with good coordinated WvW either because they just want to zerg, spamming one skill.

People wanted the game to be harder and now that they get it, they are complaining that they can’t be mindless and stand in one place spamming one skill.

I say GJ A.Net!!

The pavilion is harder now than it was last year – if that’s good or bad is debatable.

The pavilion is now a complete waste of time compared to last year because the rewards are so bad I don’t see why anyone would bother to put in the time and coordination it takes to get gold reward (more than once anyway).

The bottom line is that while last year the Crown Pavilion was hailed as one of the most awesome features added, with people going there and enjoying it for the whole duration of its stay this year’s pavilion is a ghost town.

People don’t do it because there’s no point. Last year you could get T6 drops, champ boxes and even chests after a boss was killed.
It was fun to team up with people and get loot together.

This year you have to coordinate a LOT of people and you’ll get what? Nothing good. The gold reward isn’t worth the 8 minutes spent do get it.

Might as well do a dungeon path.

It is a game, do they HAVE to give you a reward every time? I think it is ludicrous to think that way. In RL, you don’t get rewarded every time you do something. You are starting to sound like this…

Funny stuff.

It’s a game – a progression based game. The main reason players play an MMORPG and invest time into it is to improve their character – either by increasing its power, its skill set, or giving it better looks.

GW2 is driven by horizontal progression – it’s a game where looks matter – and there are a lot of cool items you can buy to make your character look better – but there’s a catch : they cost a lot of money.

Loot, cash, drops, mats – whatever – they’re the main reason MMO players keep playing. If I wanted a game with action-oriented combat for gameplay reasons alone there are many more viable choices out there that require much less time invested.

GW2 is an MMO and as such it’s being played for its character progression and not necessarily its gameplay. In a horizontal progression game loot is what drives players.

Take loot away – why should they play?

Kalendraf.9521:

Lishtenbird.2814:

So, paying 50s-1g to get back 50s-1g after 30 minutes of frustrating fighting with zerg-minded people who cannot read boss description is fun?

Okay…

Only 30 minutes? Consider yourself very lucky. I was in an instance last night that took over 90 minutes to finish a blitz, and it wasn’t due to people simply not understanding the mechanics.

The other one today didn’t finish at all. Killed 3, failed to DPS healing turret and people gave up. Tried to encourage people to split instead of tagging up… Unsuccessfully, obviously, as the chat was persistent in “it never worked”.

The fact that there’s no farm and ONE zerg hitting ONE boss does not mean it’s not a zerg content. It, de facto, is a pure zerg content since all you need to do is to zerg different bosses at the same time.

Fin.

So telling people to go away so you can have the optimal number of people on a boss calls for a cheer? Dissuading fellow players from joining you so they don’t scale the event up? I hate to quote the manifesto but what happened to:

“If I’m out hunting and another player walks by, shouldn’t I welcome his help, rather than worrying that he’s going to steal my kills or consume all the mobs I wanted to kill? Or if I want to play with someone, shouldn’t we naturally have the same goals and objectives, rather than discovering that we’re in the same area but working on a different set of quests?”

Faerun.3091:

So playing in zerg where you just spam #1 skill is fun?

Okay….

Actually yes, yes it is. Playing with a large group of people is exactly why I bought an MMO. If you’re such a baddie that all you have done in the past is spam 1, that is your fault. Besides leeching, you are just wasting your time and the time of every other player by making every fight last longer.

LordEnki.9283:

I enjoy zergs, and I enjoy organized content. Why destroy one aspect of the game for those that prefer another?

Risk vs reward. And it’s not destroying an aspect of the game, it’s balancing the relative risk/reward ratios.

Ok, I’ve come from some more runs in Crown Pavilion….
It’s unfortunate that most people don’t want to listen to anything I or any other commander on the map said. It’s basicly RNG if I’m going to get in a shard where people want to listen/read map chat. So I had some amazingly bad runs and some amazing runs

This event needs about 48-60 people. If you want to get a gold chest you need to split up 8-10 people per boss, no more since they upscale so hard that makes them HARD to kill, and it’s nor fun at all. When you do split you need to kill all bosses realtivly at the same time. So same stuff as with great jungle wurm, get bosses down to 10% of HP and then go for the kill. This is done so other bosses don’t get additional abilites from other bosses. We found out that this tactic is golden Since everytime we did it, we got gold chest. In gold chest you get 8 champ bags + festive tokens and gauntlet tickets.

Now this thread isn’t about rewards, cause like I said in my OP, rewards doesn’t seem balanced now… I just wanted to say that I love that Anet is adding hard content for medium sized group of people. We have Teq/Wurm for massive ammount of people, we have content for solo and small amount of people, but hard content for 40-60 people is missing in game.

DeWolfe.2174:

Faerun.3091:

So playing in zerg where you just spam #1 skill is fun?

Okay….

Actually yes, yes it is. Playing with a large group of people is exactly why I bought an MMO. If you’re such a baddie that all you have done in the past is spam 1, that is your fault. Besides leeching, you are just wasting your time and the time of every other player by making every fight last longer.

Way to take it litteraly, but ok… w/e.

Faerun.3091:

So playing in zerg where you just spam #1 skill is fun?

Okay….

certainly more fun than being practically forced to join a mega-guild to have a prayer of completing the event.

Harper.4173:

So glad they took one of the best events of last year and changed it in a way I feel no real desire to participate or do it again.

What a great improvement.

Vol.7601:

OP is just one of those people who enjoy content that takes a long time but rewards little.

By all means, if it satisfies you – fine. But you’re a small, small minority. But let’s sacrifice the game’s future just to satisfy you.

LordEnki.9283:

I enjoy zergs, and I enjoy organized content. Why destroy one aspect of the game for those that prefer another?

Well said gentlemen. THIS IS HOW THE MAJORITY OF YOUR PLAYERS FEEL ANET.

ZERG = FUN.
ACTUAL LOOT = FUN.

Only weirdos prefer to play a MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER Online game in small packs and boo and hiss should – God forbid – a MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER crowd form.

CuteLilKittenHugz.2064:

Well said gentlemen. THIS IS HOW THE MAJORITY OF YOUR PLAYERS FEEL ANET.

ZERG = FUN.
ACTUAL LOOT = FUN.

Only weirdos prefer to play a MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER Online game in small packs and boo and hiss should – God forbid – a MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER crowd form.

I think you should avoid speaking for the majority of players based on forum comments. If you go read Reddit, for example, the response is overwhelmingly positive.

Also. That you think Massively Multiplayer is the same as Zerg is a little troubling.

timmyf.1490:

Also. That you think Massively Multiplayer is the same as Zerg is a little troubling.

“A little”. Whenever I see this argument, I wonder what MMOs taught those people this lesson.

Asmodeus.5782:

timmyf.1490:

Also. That you think Massively Multiplayer is the same as Zerg is a little troubling.

“A little”. Whenever I see this argument, I wonder what MMOs taught those people this lesson.

I’m just as troubled when content like this comes out that practically reads ’small guilds and solo players dont deserve to have fun"

timmyf.1490:

CuteLilKittenHugz.2064:

Well said gentlemen. THIS IS HOW THE MAJORITY OF YOUR PLAYERS FEEL ANET.

ZERG = FUN.
ACTUAL LOOT = FUN.

Only weirdos prefer to play a MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER Online game in small packs and boo and hiss should – God forbid – a MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER crowd form.

I think you should avoid speaking for the majority of players based on forum comments. If you go read Reddit, for example, the response is overwhelmingly positive.

Also. That you think Massively Multiplayer is the same as Zerg is a little troubling.

I’m troubled you can’t read a simple statement in BOLD correctly. I said we are playing a MMO, but I clearly equated “MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER crowd forming” to a zerg. That is kind of the definition of “zerg”. “A zerg is a large, loosely organized group of players with the goal of completing a task or series of tasks.” – gw2 wiki

The more you know.

p.s. basing your view of the majority’s opinions on these forums or reddit is going to give you a wrong conclusion. If you’ve actually spent time playing the game, you might notice a vast number of people enjoy zerging up for champ trains. Never heard one person in game EVER say “man this champ train sucks”. But you will hear TONS of people asking where the train is. Did you get 1+1 or do I need to spell that out for you too?

CuteLilKittenHugz.2064:

p.s. basing your view of the majority’s opinions on these forums or reddit is going to give you a wrong conclusion. If you’ve actually spent time playing the game, you might notice a vast number of people enjoy zerging up for champ trains. Never heard one person in game EVER say “man this champ train sucks”. But you will hear TONS of people asking where the train is. Did you get 1+1 or do I need to spell that out for you too?

1,784 hours over 634 days. I am, admittedly, relatively casual.

No need for all the hostility, though.

And I know plenty of people who hate the champ train and can only stand doing it because they’re watching TV at the same time or something.

I like champ train.
When I’m in the zerg I really feel that I’m playing a massive multiplayer game. Emphasis in massive.

Of course, it’s not the only thing that I like to do. I like to explore. Do events. The more variety of things to do, the better!

timmyf.1490:

CuteLilKittenHugz.2064:

Well said gentlemen. THIS IS HOW THE MAJORITY OF YOUR PLAYERS FEEL ANET.

ZERG = FUN.
ACTUAL LOOT = FUN.

Only weirdos prefer to play a MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER Online game in small packs and boo and hiss should – God forbid – a MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER crowd form.

I think you should avoid speaking for the majority of players based on forum comments. If you go read Reddit, for example, the response is overwhelmingly positive.

Also. That you think Massively Multiplayer is the same as Zerg is a little troubling.

Reddit is not necessarily great for observing people’s reactions since it’s a minority that goes there and posts.
You want to get a correct idea of what’s going on? Go in game and see how players feel about it and how empty and deserted it is compared to last year.

I’m sure Anet has access to metrics that can easily prove that this year’s QP is a smashing fail compared to last year’s.

timmyf.1490:

I think you should avoid speaking for the majority of players based on forum comments. If you go read Reddit, for example, the response is overwhelmingly positive.

My experience about Reddit based on my sarcastic post about Megaservers was “Hail zergs, ANet is always right, blindly downvote blasphemers without providing arguments!” So… I’m not really surprised that something on Reddit got an “overwhelmingly positive” response; I think it doesn’t matter what it was, what mattered was that ANet did it, so it’s goooood.

As for MMO thing… I always wondered why people insisted on the fact that playing solo in a MMO is wrooong; why can’t you play next to all these people and interact with them when you feel like it, instead of always playing in a gigantic group where you can as well not exist at all?

Harper.4173:

You want to get a correct idea of what’s going on? Go in game and see how players feel about it and how empty and deserted it is compared to last year.

Asking players in the game about a change is not a great idea either; people who do not like the change simply move on from the area and won’t answer you, just like in case of megaservered world bosses.

Lishtenbird.2814:

timmyf.1490:

I think you should avoid speaking for the majority of players based on forum comments. If you go read Reddit, for example, the response is overwhelmingly positive.

My experience about Reddit based on my sarcastic post about Megaservers was “Hail zergs, ANet is always right, blindly downvote blasphemers without providing arguments!” So… I’m not really surprised that something on Reddit got an “overwhelmingly positive” response; I think it doesn’t matter what it was, what mattered was that ANet did it, so it’s goooood.

As for MMO thing… I always wondered why people insisted on the fact that playing solo in a MMO is wrooong; why can’t you play next to all these people and interact with them when you feel like it, instead of always playing in a gigantic group where you can as well not exist at all?

Harper.4173:

You want to get a correct idea of what’s going on? Go in game and see how players feel about it and how empty and deserted it is compared to last year.

Asking players in the game about a change is not a great idea either; people who do not like the change simply move on from the area and won’t answer you, just like in case of megaservered world bosses.

So I think it says a lot about the quality of a certain part of content if even the people that are there doing it are telling me how terrible it is and what a waste of time it’s become.

Doggie.3184:

Sirendor.1394:

I agree with neither. What I find fun is 5-man instances. Give me those!

Stop it, your ideas are too delicious and I haven’t eaten yet. /grumbles

I know right.

Harper.4173:

So I think it says a lot about the quality of a certain part of content if even the people that are there doing it are telling me how terrible it is and what a waste of time it’s become.

Well, unlike world boss event changes, they’re still farming achievements there at the moment, but generally, yes.

On the bright side, the Gauntlet people should have far less lag than in the previous year.

timmyf.1490:

I never said that! Mine took about 45 minutes. I spent much of that time trying to get people not to zerg and was told repeatedly to shove it up my kitten.

We were trying to prevent splitting_, when we realized we had 15 people in all 6 zones at the best. We were eventually unsuccesful – the group did split. To kill adds for the “kill 50 adds” achievements. I don’t see myself finishing the Blitz participation achievement this LS. Good thing i have my meta already.

The game’s mechanic has full of multi targeted/aoe skills. This makes zerging unavoidable in both PvE and PvE aspects. Aoe and multi targeted/cleaving skills needs much higher cooldown to prevent spamming. This can allow skilled play in WvW and sPvP without just ‘zerging and zerging’ with multi-target attacks. Old mmos focused on single-target skills, that was why 1v1 ing and skilled play was a thing for these mmos.

I see that some of the posters are pretty motivated to make this into a thread that is about Rewards aren’t good enough in Crown Pavilion. For those people, my OP and this thread wasn’t based around reward discussion, we already have enough threads about it. This thread is about new mehanics that are put in place to discourage people from simply zerging the content.
You know how many people actually left GW2 or aren’t even playing the game’s open world PvE simply because well, it’s too easy all the time (Teq/Wurm not included). This is based on 5 guilds I am, 2 of them being pretty big with 300+ members, plust the number of threads on this forum on mmorpg forum, on gw2guru, on reddit, etc… I could go on and on, but there are a lot of people who dislike the idea of zerging the content.
I love playing MMO because of the number of people you can interact with, and that is why I really dislike instanced content for 5 players in MMOs. BUT GW2 needs some medium/hard content for that people as well.
Someone said in this thread that we should have a big variety of content, and I couldn’t agree more. There are easy/hard dungeons/fractals, but there simpy isn’t enough medium/hard content in open PvE beside Teq/Wurm. Also I don’t belive it’s good for the game if only hard content is the one taht requires minimum of 120 people to do it. We need content for groups of 20-60 people. And I think we can agree that 20-60 people is anything but massive.
I like easy content just as much as you do, and I do events all the time, I particapate in those WB, temple runs, but there just isn’t much of a variety in them. Now I saw in forums that people wanted hard mode from GW1 back because PvE is too easy, and they want challenge…. So what’s wrong with providing them with challenge in GW2, example Crown Pavilion… Only thing that is required is the coordination and people willing to listen to each other and read map chat.

Please guys, this thread isn’t about rewards being bad, and lack of good commander/organizing tools for this kind of things, I simply wanted to say that Anet should keep trying to continue with this idea. The crown pavilion may not be executed perfectly, but they are getting better with it. I’m sure that when devs didn’t want trivial content in ALL of the open world PvE.

TL;DR
GW2 needs easy AND medium AND hard content in open world PvE to spice up the variety of the said content. Currently there aren’t enough medium and hard content. There are people who want that in the game. Rewards were not point of this discussion because I belive there are more then enough threads about them.

Umut.5471:

The game’s mechanic has full of multi targeted/aoe skills. This makes zerging unavoidable in both PvE and PvE aspects. Aoe and multi targeted/cleaving skills needs much higher cooldown to prevent spamming. This can allow skilled play in WvW and sPvP without just ‘zerging and zerging’ with multi-target attacks. Old mmos focused on single-target skills, that was why 1v1 ing and skilled play was a thing for these mmos.

AoE is anti zerg, problem is it’s capped to 5 people. If it wasn’t capped people would tend to “zerg” less in WvW. Also try running with organized WvW group, and you would see how much there is to GW2 big group combat. It’s quite fun and awesome btw.
Also from logical point of view, if you attack with the sword (cleave) and there are 3 people in front of you are you only going to hit one or all three?
Only thing I think they should have done is that the enemies that aren’t targete take 50% less damage from that attack(I’m talking about basic attacks not AoE skills).

Faerun.3091:

Umut.5471:

The game’s mechanic has full of multi targeted/aoe skills. This makes zerging unavoidable in both PvE and PvE aspects. Aoe and multi targeted/cleaving skills needs much higher cooldown to prevent spamming. This can allow skilled play in WvW and sPvP without just ‘zerging and zerging’ with multi-target attacks. Old mmos focused on single-target skills, that was why 1v1 ing and skilled play was a thing for these mmos.

AoE is anti zerg, problem is it’s capped to 5 people. If it wasn’t capped people would tend to “zerg” less in WvW. Also try running with organized WvW group, and you would see how much there is to GW2 big group combat. It’s quite fun and awesome btw.
Also from logical point of view, if you attack with the sword (cleave) and there are 3 people in front of you are you only going to hit one or all three?
Only thing I think they should have done is that the enemies that aren’t targete take 50% less damage from that attack(I’m talking about basic attacks not AoE skills).

In this game aoe isn’t anti zerg, think of sPvP for a small scale zerging action. If you are fighting for the middle flag, you get affected from the guys who doesn’t even focus on you while you are fighting with someone else. This ‘unintended’ damage encourages staying together with other players in pvp aspect. This also encourages roaming together in every aspect, and infinite aoe limit can’t prevent this. Even with infinite aoe limit, zergs will still destroy zergs. But it’s already technically impossible for the gameservers in wvw.
With this amount of multi-targeted skills, small scale ‘skilled’ combat in WvW fights is impossible. You will only see steam-roller instant death action if you try to do pvp in wvw.
If you think with a pve aspect, zergs and multi-targeted skills allow you to get more loot in mega events easily without even doing enough damage. Only hitting them 2-3 times with guard staff #1 is enough for loot. So zergs make things ultra-easy in pve too.

@Umut how can someting be small scale zerg action? I don’t think you are using the term zerg correctly here. Honestly I disagree with whole spvp and your ‘unintended’ damage thing as well. So on WvW and sPvP I disagree. It’s not game mehanics that rewards zerg in WvW, it’s the map design and objective design as a whole that rewards the zerg…

On topic:
You are talking about tagging mobs with AoE to get loot, but that is present in every single MMO, no, every single game I’ve every played. Reason why zergs are effective in open world pve is for two reason: Scaling doesn’t work very well, and mob A.I. is quite stupid. Also pve mobs don’t have the cleave ability on their auto-attack as far as I can tell or they simply lack the aoe themself. Which is very wrong imho. I think Anet rushed the game, since I remember them talking that enemy scales with amount of people by gaining new abilities. This is in 90% not true. Only mob I can remember now is the drake broodmother, she is the only mob that gains new ability based on how many people are there for the event.

Don’t get me wrong I can see what you are tying to say with AoE and multi shots, and you are right there, I’m not going to argue with that, but I don’t belive the problem lies with the skills, as much as it lies with mob encounters (mehanics and A.I.), and that annoying defiant stack

Not quite true, the pile of dead people last night fighting the campion spider queen proves that they have AOE damage. Very effective AOE damage.

Wait there buddy, I’m gonna to revive you!!

• Spider plant the poison thingies.
  OH C… BOOM!

And if you give the enemies cleave, you need to give the tanks a taunt. An the healers the power to mantain the tank alive.
Wait… where I saw that before?

@rincewind.9528
I was talking about ordinary mobs, not champions.
Can you elaborate more on why would you need taunt if you give cleave abitlity to champs? Because as far as I know WoW bosses don’t cleave on auto-attack as well, yet palyers use taunt on them…
PvE in gw2 has a lot of problems, from stacking, zerker stats being the best gear for pve w/o a competition, to CC being uselss as well as support, A.I. being pretty dumb. It’s pretty extensive imho. But I still prefer it to any other MMO because of the combat system. Combat in GW2 is the best for me, but encounters and mobs were poorly designed to fit this new system at the launch of the game. They are getting better, but they have a long way to go. And no I’m not a hater btw, after all I play it every day from the BWE1 and I have over 1,8k hours of playtime.