Guild Wars 2

Right so I’m having a bit of trouble getting my head around what the point of being in a party is, currently dynamic events etc where there are loads of mobs coming at you it just turns into a massive “AoE tag all the mobs as soon as possible before they die” event. If you don’t get a hit in, you get no loot whether you’re in a party or not, and during dynamic events you’re punished if you revive fellow players and buff them as the event itself only cares whether you’re dealing damage or not.

I recall spending a whole lot of time reviving probably close to 50 or more players during the last Centaur dynamic event in Harathi Hinterlands and was punished with a Silver Medal event reward simply because I didn’t damage the boss enough whilst in fact I made sure other players did make up for it by being alive.

Playing as a support role is not rewarding in any group play in GW2 at the moment as it’s all about whether you’ve hit a mob or not, you get less XP, less loot and generally less of everything if you decide to be a helpful player.

This is actually a pretty big concern for me as I don’t want to spend my whole time in every single dynamic event trying to make sure I use as much AoE as possible on all the incoming mobs.

I really hope ArenaNet makes it so at least if you’re in a party you get XP and loot for what you’re friends have tagged so you can play as a group and not a frantic smack everything that moves type of playstyle.

Yes of course you have the option to play as what you want but it should NOT be punished to be a buffer/support player. This also makes it a big concern for some classes that lack AoE abilities, some classes are forced to use AoE based weapons just to be able to get something out of a event rather then a weapon they want to use.

Sorry for rambling on and on and probably going in circles but this really concerns me and I’m running out of ways to describe what I’m trying to get across.

Anyone else feeling this way?

Just feel like I spend more time tagging mobs then trying to enjoy what’s actually going on around me.

Being punished for stopping to revive a player doesn’t exactly produce team play.

i , believe in the current state, the party system as a whole is not funtioning as it should. but i do understand what you are saying and i agree, it is an area that requires attention and needs to be fixed. i would love to be able to “party” with others and have fun.

being in party somewhat helps you staying together on the map if you play with friends or guildies (though the “see blue dot”-range seriously needs a bost). And its used for dungeons and storylines. It is fine this way imo, I see too much PL/PF abuse with the system you propose.

Algreg.3629:

being in party somewhat helps you staying together on the map if you play with friends or guildies (though the “see blue dot”-range seriously needs a bost). And its used for dungeons and storylines. It is fine this way imo, I see too much PL/PF abuse with the system you propose.

System I propose? You mean the one used in every single other MMO?
The current system does not reward team play, it rewards selfish damage tagging, it’s not about single targeting down the mobs that hurt the most, it’s a matter of making sure everything has been tagged so you get xp and loot from it.

This game was supposed to reward playing with others and help eachother, being a support role is currently pointless, you help others and get nothing for it.

I have to agree with the original post. There are problems with the way parties and event credit is handled. I mentioned this elsewhere, but it applies here: a player who isn’t dealing damage is a player being penalized. There’s just too much emphasis on dealing damage and not enough on support and control.

A few days back I came across a champion mob that was tearing apart a handful of players. By the time I arrived only two of them were left standing and they were running around in a full panic. I was able to get the champion focused on me and “tank” it, but at the cost of sacrificing a lot of my personal damage output.

My actions bought the others the breathing room they needed to get the downed players back up and into the fight. It also bought my friends (who were further down the map selling at a vendor) time to arrive on the scene. I continued to keep the champion focused on me until we all defeated him.

I received a silver medal. That’s nice, but my friends (who arrived minutes after I did) received a gold medal. I guess, between keeping the champion focused on me and controlled, I just didn’t do enough damage to earn a gold medal (where as they all did despite being in the fight for less time than I was). The lesson I learned here is that I should have just brought out my big guns and joined the messy chaos with everyone else rather than bringing some order to the scene. I thought GW2 was supposed to be about teamwork, though?

Same problem with those defense missions where dozens of mobs come running up to a defense point. Attempting to break their charge with some crowd control is, apparently, a waste of time because it goes unrewarded. If you’re not laying down the AOE death along with everyone else, you’re not going to see any loot drops. No real encouragement for teamwork there either.

I would really like to see actions other than damage dealing to count for something, both in terms of medals on events and earning drops from mobs. I want to participate more in support and control roles, but not if it’s going to be a thankless job.

Handling parties better would at least alleviate some of the problem. As it stands, the way parties are handled create even more problems instead.

Example: Bob and Jane form a party and soon find themselves in the middle of an event. Now, Bob has designed his character around dealing damage quickly, where as Jane has focused on more of a support build at the cost of sacrificing some damage. As they find themselves surrounded by hordes of invading bandits, Bob cuts down two bandits for every bandit Jane defeats. He is, in part, able to do this thanks to the support heals and buffs coming from Jane that are shared across the group.

Jane sees another player who obviously focused on maximizing their damage output, but said player goes down. Thinking it is better to get him back into the fight, Jane kneels down to focus on reviving him. Her partner Bob helps out by killing any bandit that threatens to interrupt Jane.

By the the time the fight is over, Bob has killed 66 bandits, and Jane has killed 34 bandits and revived 4 players. For the sake of argument, let’s assume each bandit is worth 100 XP, and reviving a player is worth 50 XP. Thus, on the fight alone, Bob has made 6600 XP during the event, where as Jane has made 3400 + 200 = 3600 XP.

And that is the problem. Bob and Jane were grouped together tackling the event as a team. What should have happened here (but doesn’t in GW2) is that XP for all actions (killing and reviving in this case) should have been split right down the middle for the two party members. Together, Bob and Jane generated 10,200 XP. And, as they are a team, that 10,200 should have been split in half – 5,100 going to Bob and 5,100 XP going to Jane.

This should always be the case provided players are a) grouped and b) within a reasonable range of one another. For a game that prides itself on systems that encourage PvE cooperation rather than competition between players, I simply can not understand why official parties are not dividing experience equally. I am not asking for the two players to receive bonus experience as a party incentive, I am only expecting the available XP to be distributed fairly and equally.

And for friends who enjoy leveling together this is a frustrating problem, and it is not one that becomes moot simply because GW2 is sporting a level-down mechanic. My friends and I like to advance together. We like to unlock advancement skill/slots/abilities/features at the same time. We become frustrated when we’re advancing at different rates regardless of what our “effective level” in an area is. And GW2 is (surprisingly) one of the few MMOs where this has become a problem. Rather than taking a step forward, it has taken an unappealing step backwards in this area.

Well written, Edge.

And written at a length that will never be read. Oh well, at least I got it off my chest.

Mevem: You’re exagerating. By your own admission, you still got silver which is far from “nothing”. Furthermore, it’s not punishment, it’s merely not as great a reward as DPSing tons.

I totally agree with you on the AoE tagging. I’ve mostly played as my elementalist so I haven’t had complaints about that aspect yet, but I see how it could be really annoying to people. I don’t find I get loot from every mob I tag, though, so it doesn’t really seem OP and we kinda need a reason to zerg up like that anyway.

I don’t know about your experiences, but my experience is that I have some support abilities, some tankish abilities, and some DPS. I don’t play any one role all the time in groups. I keep switching based on my needs as well as those around me. I’m quite satisfied with the balance in this regard.

As a group, I can see my party members on the map, have a group only chat, and have access to their portraits. Not sure what I’d use the portraits for ATM but as I learn other little things about the game and as it’s fleshed out, that may prove to be very valuable indeed! It also shows their buffs and debuffs which is useful for supporting them and gauging if they’ll be able to support us.

But yeah, either we should learn more about how support exactly is rewarded or it should be modified (or both). The party system, also, could do with improvements. Sorry to repeat myself, but I really don’t find them to be much of a problem ATM. Just not as great as they could be.

Edge: It’s a matter of balance. Fact is, you still got plenty of credit for what you did even though you didn’t get as much as you deserved. The difference between a gold and a silver isn’t that great and at least you know, and probably those around know, just how epic your actions were. And the fact that the game engine allows for such epic play is amazing in itself. Aye, this system does need work but there’s plenty of time to work on it and, as it is, much of the rest of the game is really quite epic, all things considered.

You didn’t take into consideration the XP gained at the completion of the even which would probably add, what, maybe another 6k XP to them both? If he got gold and she silver, maybe she’ll only make 5k XP but it’s still pretty close. Yep, definitely needs work but it’s still at least functional and not completely broken. Plus, knowing the system isn’t balanced as well as it could be, Bob could reward Jane in some way, like giving her mats she needs or giving her some silver to buy a nice new piece of gear. Aye, it’d be great if the game took care of that but at the same time, it’d’ve been great if Blizz had introduced better ways to manage loot ninjas in WoW. I played that game for years and it was still pretty broken in that regard.

Distributing rewards fairly is very difficult. If everyone gets the same regardless, then it rewards players to get into range of an event then go make themselves a sandwhich. Any system they implement will likely have ways of exploiting it. Again, I’m not saying the system is fine the way it is. It certainly needs work and I’m sure AN knows it. I just think it’s not as broken as I feel you’re expressing.

IMO, if in a few months the system hasn’t taken significant strides in a positive direction, then I’d say your stance is quite reasonable. As it is, they’re still, I believe, focussing on basic issues of connectivity, major flaws like exploitative bugs, and expanding the servers to deal with the high traffic volume.

Khono.6942:

Distributing rewards fairly is very difficult. If everyone gets the same regardless, then it rewards players to get into range of an event then go make themselves a sandwhich. Any system they implement will likely have ways of exploiting it. Again, I’m not saying the system is fine the way it is. It certainly needs work and I’m sure AN knows it. I just think it’s not as broken as I feel you’re expressing.

I don’t think distributing rewards fairly (for a group) is difficult at all. It’s really rather simple, and nearly every MMO manages to get it right. If you and I are within a reasonable range of one another, and we’re grouped, then the credit for the actions one of us take is divided equally between us both. Shared evenly. It is that simple.

Your comment about party members making sandwiches is the counter that comes up to that suggestion all the time, and yet it makes no sense. Because the answer to that dilemma is quite simple as well: don’t be in a group with people who are taking advantage of you. If you choose to remain in the group, sharing credit with someone who joins the party, puts you on auto-follow, and then goes AFK to watch TV.. that is not a failing of any system mechanics. That is failing to use common sense and getting yourself out of that ridiculous situation.

And for groups made out of genuine friends, the outcome to such situations are usually different. If you and I are real friends, and we’re grouped, and you have to put me on /follow and go AFK for 10 minutes to let the dog out.. then that’s fine. I don’t mind remaining in a party with you and having you share part of the credit for everything I do. I know you can return the same favor when the shoe is on the other foot. There is nothing wrong with that, which is probably why most MMOs handle groups that way.

dude i totally agree, idk y they didnt make it so reviving also contributes to a gold medal.

I have to disagree. I revive and do damage during events. Literally, I do both things. For most events you’ll need to use a weapon that can AOE. Hit as many things as possible, just how it is. I’ve gotten silver before, but that’s when I was either lower level than I should have been for the event or my gear was out-dated (I didn’t have the benefits of trading post when I leveled my first character, a mesmer, to 80). As you do events multiple times you’ll know where things spawn which can give you an advantage. The only problem I’ve had is at night when there’s some serious damage dealers (and more people) on so I’m unable to loot as much. I still got plenty of XP while leveling. I have two 80s.

I do agree that reviving should count towards the event if it really doesn’t already.

No idea on groups except that when grouped you can see them on the map. I haven’t grouped a whole lot to notice if there’s other benefits. I don’t think you should get credit and XP just by being grouped with someone.

Metal.3826:

No idea on groups except that when grouped you can see them on the map. I haven’t grouped a whole lot to notice if there’s other benefits. I don’t think you should get credit and XP just by being grouped with someone.

Please explain why not? Let’s say you and I are grouped, and a pack of monsters attack us, and I damage and kill them all. You only damage a fraction of them, spending more time tossing out some support buffs and peppering the area around us with healing magic. Because of this, I get credit (and loot) for killing everything, and you only get credit for killing the few mobs that you managed to damage.

And yet, we’re a team. We tackled the encounter as a team. We used teamwork to overcome that challenge. We both pulled our weight in our own way. Why would you think you should not get equal credit for being a part of that effort?

As for AoE’ing down everything in an event, that does seem to be the smart move if you’re interested in credit and loot drops. And that’s a real shame. The other night we were escorting an event NPC and a huge pack of monsters charged in and attacked. Along with everyone else, I AoE’d everything down, managed to tag nearly everything, and got a lot of drops. But the escort NPC died in the process.

So, we revived him and I was determined to actually protect the escort NPC during the next encounter (since that was the whole point). I swapped my weapon set to something more control oriented and when the next large pack of monsters arrived I broke up their huge charge with a string of crowd-control abilities. As a result, the rest of the players were able to wipe them out before the escort NPC took any damage at all.

Pretty cool, right? I was certainly very proud of that move. Except.. I didn’t get any credit for that entire pack because I didn’t damage anything. So now I’m standing there weighing the loss of crafting material drops versus protecting an NPC on an escort mission (who can always be revived). Needless to say, I switched back to my AoE damage weapons. It’s just lame to feel like the only choice in these events is to do as much AoE damage as possible. And I think it sends players the wrong message.. mainly that teamwork is overrated and to focus on helping yourself and yourself only.

MeveM.7913:

Algreg.3629:

being in party somewhat helps you staying together on the map if you play with friends or guildies (though the “see blue dot”-range seriously needs a bost). And its used for dungeons and storylines. It is fine this way imo, I see too much PL/PF abuse with the system you propose.

System I propose? You mean the one used in every single other MMO?

I’m not sure if you haven’t noticed yet, but this is not “every single other MMO”.

The current system does not reward team play, it rewards selfish damage tagging, it’s not about single targeting down the mobs that hurt the most, it’s a matter of making sure everything has been tagged so you get xp and loot from it.

This game was supposed to reward playing with others and help eachother, being a support role is currently pointless, you help others and get nothing for it.

While it is true to an extent, there is no pure support role either. All characters attack in a way or another, they just need to figure out how to balance exp gain in events for means other than just raw damage.

Being in a group or not, should frankly be irrelvant, the DE should reward on efforts put in, currently there seem to be two flaws:

1 – Buffs/debuffs, heals, rezzing, shields, etc are not rewarded (or maybe they are but in an apparently utterly insignifcant ratio comapred to damage)

2 – Tagging hugely favours certain classes (rangers, warriros thieves, etc) that have burst, low cooldown/spammable AOE or high damage piercing shots, which results in far more loot (for often relatively little effort) whislt say a Mesmer with slow, limited AOE sees far less sparkly mobs to loot (and is probably working a lot harder)

Saying all that there is a thread in the dynamic events forum where a dev (or whatever the red indicates) states they are aware of issues and are looking at it.