Guild Wars 2

A team of 11 players enters a football field.
1 player goes to sleep on a bench, 1 player goes to runt about how bad the looks of the prize are, 2 players are catching butterflies, 3 players go to charge fans for signed photos, and 4 players struggle on the football field with their inexperienced opponents and manage to win the match in the last second.
All 11 players get the same amount of prize money, trophies and contracts with advertising agencies. (Butterflies and money from fans not counted.)

This is exactly how I feel every time on Piken Square when we hit 1200 at the very last moment despite of hordes of zergs saving children, AFKers hidden around the map, heirloom runners and mapchat trolls telling us how bad the ultimate reward is. I counted that during a rescue cycle I could save around 20-25 “unique” citizens; with a hypothetical 100 players in a map, that makes 2500 saved citizens… yet we only see 1200. So, the question is, where did the other 1300 citizens go?

I know this has been discussed many times, but here I will be constructive and I ask you not to derail the thread and to be constructive as well.

The main reason why these problems arise is the multiplication of specific game design decisions and psychology of most people players which tells them to maximize returns and minimize investments. Some casual-player friendly concepts of GW2 do work in open world to an extent, but they simply fail in recent large-scale events, with Escape from LA and Twisted Marionette being the most recent and evident ones. Here’s the list of issues and the proposed solutions.

ISSUES:

Counter-productive goals

• Whole-map content should not be designed in a way that player A’s goal hurts player B’s goal in cooperative PvE. I’m speaking here primarily about heirlooms and things like AP for destroying bridges in EoTM; Marionette Warden achievements and hit-and-AFK Hologram achievements can also be counted as such.

Counter-productive incentives

• Even more so, whole-map content shouldn’t be designed in a way that player A gets his reward PLUS a reward for what player B was doing, but not the other way round. I’m speaking about both zerging and heirlooms runs here.
• With the current system, you can get both the reward from group effort done by other people and lots of bags from zerging by upscaling events; from my experience, you can get around twice as much bags by zerging. Same goes for heirlooms. In Marionette event, it was often more rewarding to swap lines and farm keys instead of fighting the Warden which would have been failed anyway.
• The final reward is too random and unrewarding compared to guaranteed rewards from farming bags. Furthermore, rewards from farmed bags are better than the ultimate rewards in short term, and that is a big problem: you may never get your jetpack skin, but you may get some unlimited tonics and airship tickets and fabric from bags – and that’s additional to champ bags and greens-blues.

Leeching

• The way current whole-map content is designed at the moment, you can easily AFK the whole run (Escape from LA) or hit several mobs and then AFK (Marionette) and still get the guaranteed reward which other people had to earn.
• It is often very difficult or next to impossible to tell a legitimate AFKer (sudden real-world problems) apart from a leecher.
• There is no mechanics to report leechers (apart from botting), and even if you do, see above.
• Hiding properly is the easiest way of avoiding being reported.

PROPOSED SOLUTIONS:

All activities count towards the same goal

• In case of Escape from LA, both heirlooms, encouraged/resed citizens, miasma events, escort/defend events can all count towards “good deeds” counter instead of “citizens saved”. Events actually did it, but zerg + scaling was a large problem with them.
• LS meta achievements should contain a large portion of achievements which are tied to the main source of goal contribution – in our case, encouraging and reviving citizens. Current meta achievements (not dailies) did not have a SINGLE achievement towards encouraging citizens; it did have a counter-productive heirloom discovery achievement, on the other hand. These achievements should require a high score to fulfill and a reward tied to it, and they would clearly tell players who open the achievements panel on the release day what they’re supposed to do in the new event. However, the achievement which has a reward tied to it is the same heirloom counter-productive one.

Equal rewards

• Since doing map events “better” is impossible and it always gives a fixed contribution (N saved citizens) to discourage zerging, other activities should provide the proportionally same reward to players who’re doing other parts of the event. I’m speaking here about rewards from encouraging and reviving citizens – like giving “Bags of a grateful citizen” which are fully identical to the “supplies” bags in contents. To discourage exploiting by killing and reviving citizens, each citizen may have a limited amount of bags tied to it, or a diminishing return for each consecutive resurrection may be introduced. Same goes for heirlooms – you have a chance to get a bag in rubble piles. Of course, to avoid devaluation of bags, drops from mobs should be proportionally adjusted.
• To discourage zerging in both miasma and escort events, scaling must be made VERY steep. That means that a miasma event should be extremely easily done with 5 players (even the Molten one), however 20 players in the infamous “children escort” would spawn so many champs that they would wipe all these players in 10 seconds (and supposedly despawn after some time).
• That said, since event give a fixed amount of contribution towards the goal, events should also have a fixed amount of loot: that means champs give no guaranteed bags at all, and half a map escorting children would get so little reward per person that they would eventually switch to more rewarding – and contributing – tasks.
• In case of fighting Marionette Wardens, proportional amount of keys should have been dropped when defeating the Warden, as this would have made going to platforms equally rewarding to switching and farming lanes.
• Actions like repairing barricades should also reward players – they may even do it in a different way as long as it makes sense (e.g. with a chance of sprockets or valuable metal scraps to salvage). Especially since the amount of hammers is limited, and dropping a hammer to continue zerging is counter-productive. Players should not sacrifice their reward for the sake of others since PvE in GW2 is “cooperative” and not “altruistic”.
• Ultimate event rewards should be ultimately better in short term and include things such as a guaranteed exotic or 3 guaranteed rares; if Frozen Maw 5-10 minute fight has as much, why a 45 minute event cannot? Once the randomness of the reward is lowered, more people will be eager to work towards it.

Personal reward system

• The “Overall good deeds” counter should not be the only counter on whole-map events; the other one is a “Personal contribution” counter. The “Personal contribution” counter should be the thing that defines whether you get the ultimate reward (e.g. Ultimate citizen’s rescue bag) as other players or smaller/no reward in case the overall counter reaches the goal. Due to the controversies of penalizing AFK players and heirloom runners which effectively take up player spots and generate overflows, a personal reward system is the right way to go.
• Personal reward system should be tuned in a way that an inexperienced player which did his best during the whole event gets the ultimate reward in the end, but a 10k AP lazy AFKer who hit three mobs and then jumped into a cave does not. This can be coded by counting “good deeds” in ways similar to: per encouraging/resing citizens; per killing mobs in the vicinity of a moving NPC; per healing/stealthing/cleansing NPC; per finding heirlooms etc. An internal limit of good deeds per citizen or diminishing returns can be introduced to counter “let die and res” exploiting, as well as requiring the “reached safe spot” status for addition of all “good deeds”. Other algorithms can be too tricky to implement, but they can also involve some background checking of action and movement patterns.
• In the end, the overall reward each player gets is a correct representation of the player’s contribution to the goal of the event, and all players can enjoy a cooperative PvE instead of fighting each other – including zergs, AFKers, achievement hunters, chatters and trolls.

reserved for potential use

My Prime Holo fight last night had 3-5 AFKers. I reported them all for botting.

Their defense? “Getting chivos.”

In Guild Wars 2, you get achievements for standing in the corner avoiding combat. You get rewards for standing in the corner while you do something else on your computer.

It just boggles my mind.

ArenaNet: PLEASE at least add an option for Leeching to the report menu so we can correctly identify why we are reporting a player. The AFKers try to scare people away from reporting them by saying “You can’t report me, there’s not an AFK option, you’ll get in trouble instead for a false report” which keeps a lot of people from filing the report.

i suggest to punish leavers, lower-leveled players, norn, asuras, humans and everyone who breathes aswell. in my experience, afking was the only way after 11 try to get two achievements. deal with it.

There are multiple different events on this Map. It sounds like saving the citizens is the one you put priority on and feel that others should feel the same way you do.

I see it differently
100 people enter orr, I get a pop up box that Arah is being taken by undead. Although there are many different events going on, and people in Orr to get map completion and maybe the daily jumping puzzle, because I think Arah is more important I think ANET should not allow the other people to play the events they want, they should be doing the one I want.

Your argument is exactly the “play the way I want you to play” one we hear soo much. When you say discourage zergs, you are saying that your preference has a greater priority than the 50-60 people having fun in the zerg.

You have to face the fact that the citizen event can be completed with 30-40 people working on saving them (as the other events give credit for citizen saves). If you cannot find 30-40 people wanting to do that part of the quest, you expect it to be forced on them so you can play the way you want.

Selfish, selfish, selfish

Eternal.9148:

i suggest to punish leavers, lower-leveled players, norn, asuras, humans and everyone who breathes aswell. in my experience, afking was the only way after 11 try to get two achievements. deal with it.

You could also try:
1) Being better
2) Not getting the achievement you didn’t earn

You don’t deserve the achievement. That’s why it’s an achievement.

timmyf.1490:

Eternal.9148:

i suggest to punish leavers, lower-leveled players, norn, asuras, humans and everyone who breathes aswell. in my experience, afking was the only way after 11 try to get two achievements. deal with it.

You could also try:
1) Being better
2) Not getting the achievement you didn’t earn

You don’t deserve the achievement. That’s why it’s an achievement.

Oh, so it’s my fault if everytime i try to fight an invisible laser beam hits me? I don’t think so. Anyway, now i have the achievement and i deserved it, save your rethoric for someone who cares. Anyway, i suggest to punish also who doesn’t ress after being k.o., it’s more annoying than 5-6 ppl afking at the final event.

timmyf.1490:

ArenaNet: PLEASE at least add an option for Leeching to the report menu so we can correctly identify why we are reporting a player. The AFKers try to scare people away from reporting them by saying “You can’t report me, there’s not an AFK option, you’ll get in trouble instead for a false report” which keeps a lot of people from filing the report.

I do not approve of leeching in this fight, but after doing a couple of runs, the AFK thing seemed like a perfect solution to the problem. And you know, in this specific case I feel that reporting AFKers here is similar to reporting goats for eating beautiful flowers because the farmer was not smart enough to lock the garden gate.

Eternal.9148:

i suggest to punish leavers, lower-leveled players, norn, asuras, humans and everyone who breathes aswell. in my experience, afking was the only way after 11 try to get two achievements. deal with it.

^ exactly the way of thought which contributes to the current state of real world.

No thank you. Instead of doing an achievement through an “exploit”, I will not do it at all (since these achievements require me to wait for corrects buffs without crossing lasers and thus not DPS for 75% of my time and thus put other people’s success at risk) and instead post a constructive thread on the forum which can tell devs why their ideas were bad.

I agree that achievements and rewards should not be given to people who hide in the corner and that the blame for this primarily relies on the design of the event.

Sadly, many players in this game are all too willing to park themselves inside an event and do nothing to get those achievements and rewards instead of working to get them in a legitimate manner.

I think it’s a lot of talk for a very simple problem. When you’re dealing with a mapwide event, individual contributions matter little unless they are specifically made to matter a lot. In recent events, they are not made to matter a lot, so there is little encouragement for people to be ambitious.

I agree that these achievements are poorly designed, but someone achievement hunting (and potentially afking a little to do it) is no less or more valid a way to play the game than your approach. The proper solution isn’t to blame the players who are just trying to get achievements and things, it’s to blame the design and bark up ANet’s tree to get it improved. Consider the following achievement idea for Escape from Lion’s Arch that would’ve completely changed the number of people contributing to saving civilians:

Rally 1/25/100/500/1000 civilians
Rewards:
AP: 1/5/10/20/40 Total
Item: Ultimate Citizen’s Rescue Bag
Title: Civilian Savior

Just having an achievement like that would’ve encouraged a lot of contribution from players to get civilians. Similarly for the hologram, achievements shouldn’t be based on avoidance, they should be based on engaging. How about the following achievement to encourage players to participate:

Skip the six-split holograms phase by killing all three colored holograms at once
Rewards:
AP 10

Now you’d get people contributing to try to get that to happen, and players would be encouraged to improve in their understanding and contributions to the fight as opposed to afking it. Want to alienate afking even further? Make it so each phase is it’s own event, and that if you attack in phase 1 and afk you’d miss participation credit for phase 2 and 3. Suddenly people will participate!

The real problem is with the design, not with the players. Players are predictable and easily guided. The reason Marionette was such a success and drove a lot of players to participate is that it had achievements that encouraged them to do well in the fight and to know the mechanics… Not considering the power core grind, anyway.

zaybug.9284:

There are multiple different events on this Map. It sounds like saving the citizens is the one you put priority on and feel that others should feel the same way you do.

I see it differently
100 people enter orr, I get a pop up box that Arah is being taken by undead. Although there are many different events going on, and people in Orr to get map completion and maybe the daily jumping puzzle, because I think Arah is more important I think ANET should not allow the other people to play the events they want, they should be doing the one I want.

Your argument is exactly the “play the way I want you to play” one we hear soo much. When you say discourage zergs, you are saying that your preference has a greater priority than the 50-60 people having fun in the zerg.

You have to face the fact that the citizen event can be completed with 30-40 people working on saving them (as the other events give credit for citizen saves). If you cannot find 30-40 people wanting to do that part of the quest, you expect it to be forced on them so you can play the way you want.

Selfish, selfish, selfish

Please try to feel the difference.

• “My preference” is not something I got off the top of my head. “My preference” is the exact result of seeing Goal: Citizens Saved on the right side of the screen. Is it too much to ask of people, to contribute to a goal which is clearly stated when entering map? Each miasma event needed 5-8-10 people, escorts the same. No, not 20-40 players.
• If you go in to get map completion or daily puzzles, than you won’t complain that you are not getting the 5 group effort bags, right? Ah, wait… you would.
• If you go in to enjoy saving children in a zerg and save 2 citizens out of 1200, you won’t complain that you are not getting the 5 group effort bags PLUS to those you farmed, right? Ah, wait… you would! Selfish, selfish, selfish ©

This has nothing to do with “forcing” people to do content. This has a lot to do with rewarding people only for content they HAVE done, and as one of those “30-40 people working on saving them”, I do not have to “face” the fact that zergs will get twice as much with minimal effort because of my effort. It’s simply bad (or rather lazy) design – period.

timmyf.1490:

Eternal.9148:

i suggest to punish leavers, lower-leveled players, norn, asuras, humans and everyone who breathes aswell. in my experience, afking was the only way after 11 try to get two achievements. deal with it.

You could also try:
1) Being better
2) Not getting the achievement you didn’t earn

You don’t deserve the achievement. That’s why it’s an achievement.

That would require work but why do that when you can blame an invisible laser beam that I’ve yet to encounter in the dozen or so scarlet holo fights I’ve been in.

This game has so many more fundamental issues then this.

I have played the new event more times then I care to mention. From what I seen I think the GW2 populous should worry more about it’s individual player skill then the 3 people sitting afk in the back since those people will not effect the outcome of the encounter.

The fight mechanics couldn’t get any easier and yet I still see 3/4 of the players failing them each and every single map I’m in.

As I said the afk’ers are effecting nothing. Poor content design and an overall poorly skilled player base in this game is.

Worry more about yourselves and less about others.

When or If it got to the point then the afkers were effecting the completion of the event then I would agree with you. But, as it stand they are not.

Contribution should be significantly more rewarding than standing in the corner doing nothing. Period.

When you get equal or, in this crazy case, BETTER rewards/achievements for doing nothing than something, there is a problem.

Actually, this is Anet’s problem and it is about time they take their heads out of the sand and start to deal with it properly. They are the ones making content that only allow specific numbers of people to participate in each instance and unfortunately they are set up to be somewhat challenging and this translates to the need for participation by the majority of players.
As far as I am concerned AFK’ing is grieving the other players because in many cases their non-participation could lead to failure of the event. I did it twice yesterday and failed due to people standing in the bloody corner doing nothing so we didn’t have enough dps or support to complete in the time frame allotted, and that by its very definition is interfering with a player’s progress, hence grieving.

I understand there are legitimate reasons people go afk, been there done that but I think there should be a tab to report people specifically for this and it is up to Anet to look for patterns of abuse much the same as botting and punish the abusers accordingly.

Rising Dusk.2408:

-snip-

The real problem is with the design, not with the players. Players are predictable and easily guided. The reason Marionette was such a success and drove a lot of players to participate is that it had achievements that encouraged them to do well in the fight and to know the mechanics… Not considering the power core grind, anyway.

I hope you were contributing and not arguing with my post, because that’s what I basically said in the post in a condensed form

Many people seem to have read the title and then skipped to commenting on why zergs and AFK achievements are ok and why I am bad as I “force” people to do content they do not want. Please understand that my post is about the reasons why people prefer to zerg and AFK and solutions to these problems, and not a rage/grief post.

•To discourage zerging in both miasma and escort events, scaling must be made VERY steep. That means that a miasma event should be extremely easily done with 5 players (even the Molten one), however 20 players in the infamous “children escort” would spawn so many champs that they would wipe all these players in 10 seconds (and supposedly despawn after some time).

How is this NOT forcing people to play the way you want?

Lishtenbird.2814:

Rising Dusk.2408:

-snip-

The real problem is with the design, not with the players. Players are predictable and easily guided. The reason Marionette was such a success and drove a lot of players to participate is that it had achievements that encouraged them to do well in the fight and to know the mechanics… Not considering the power core grind, anyway.

I hope you were contributing and not arguing with my post, because that’s what I basically said in the post in a condensed form

Many people seem to have read the title and then skipped to commenting on why zergs and AFK achievements are ok and why I am bad as I “force” people to do content they do not want. Please understand that my post is about the reasons why people prefer to zerg and AFK and solutions to these problems, and not a rage/grief post.

Here’s a solution since I provided nothing of value earlier… They could just halve the achievement points and give no loot for those dead or didn’t tag with enough damage when it’s rewarded… That way they get their achieve but less points than people who actually did the work… Points will be rounded down of course in the event of a partial point. And for those complaining about dying… Seriously… Mechanics are real straight forward in almost every encounter in this game… Get better… It shouldn’t be no moving and 11111 everything anyway… The player base as a whole just needs to step it up a bit.

timmyf.1490:

My Prime Holo fight last night had 3-5 AFKers. I reported them all for botting.

Their defense? “Getting chivos.”

In Guild Wars 2, you get achievements for standing in the corner avoiding combat. You get rewards for standing in the corner while you do something else on your computer.

It just boggles my mind.

ArenaNet: PLEASE at least add an option for Leeching to the report menu so we can correctly identify why we are reporting a player. The AFKers try to scare people away from reporting them by saying “You can’t report me, there’s not an AFK option, you’ll get in trouble instead for a false report” which keeps a lot of people from filing the report.

You should not be mad ad those people but ad Anet for the way they designed the games.
during the marionette I had the same. I had to do it multiple times and it came up once every x hours so I put my char there waiting for it to pop up. Of course I am not going to stare at my screen the whole time. I do other stuff in the mean time. It happened twice that when I came back there where two chest thanking me for my participation. I did not even do it on purpose but I can understand that some people do it so they can cheat out under the boring grind they might find required to do because of the temporary achievements.

When you design the content like this (do the same thing multiple times and wait x time before you can do it) this happens. I guess it has a lot to do with Anets unwillingness to build raid systems (because WoW) and there willingness to make everything a achievement grind.

In LA I was at some point just doing one of the achievements (collect stones or something) by doing so I was not a big help for the rest but well I was just doing the achievements.

So yes it’s bad and annoying when that happens, I did stand on both sides but don’t blame the players for it.

Magnus Steelgrave.6580:

Lishtenbird.2814:

Rising Dusk.2408:

-snip-

The real problem is with the design, not with the players. Players are predictable and easily guided. The reason Marionette was such a success and drove a lot of players to participate is that it had achievements that encouraged them to do well in the fight and to know the mechanics… Not considering the power core grind, anyway.

I hope you were contributing and not arguing with my post, because that’s what I basically said in the post in a condensed form

Many people seem to have read the title and then skipped to commenting on why zergs and AFK achievements are ok and why I am bad as I “force” people to do content they do not want. Please understand that my post is about the reasons why people prefer to zerg and AFK and solutions to these problems, and not a rage/grief post.

Here’s a solution since I provided nothing of value earlier… They could just halve the achievement points and give no loot for those dead or didn’t tag with enough damage when it’s rewarded… That way they get their achieve but less points than people who actually did the work… Points will be rounded down of course in the event of a partial point. And for those complaining about dying… Seriously… Mechanics are real straight forward in almost every encounter in this game… Get better… It shouldn’t be no moving and 11111 everything anyway… The player base as a whole just needs to step it up a bit.

So you want nothing but zerker templates, gear and specs to be doing events?

This has to be the absolute worst idea I have heard and does nothing but push everyone into the mindless zerk meta dps zerg game play mode.

timmyf.1490:

Their defense? “Getting chivos.”

The ones I’ve encountered were a bit more creative. “You’re an kitten for complaining about it, besides it’s Anet’s fault anyway.”

You heard it here first, Anet forced their hand.

Rangersix.1754:

timmyf.1490:

Their defense? “Getting chivos.”

The ones I’ve encountered were a bit more creative. “You’re an kitten for complaining about it, besides it’s Anet’s fault anyway.”

You heard it here first, Anet forced their hand.

Phone call, mouse batteries died, kids woke up,spilled something on your keyboard, went to get a drink.

These are all everyday things that can happen and people need to go afk.

There is nothing that can or should be done with this. Reason being someone can put 10x’s the effort of you in and have to afk for 30 seconds to 1 min for something(stuff happens) and come back. By that time people like you report them.

How right does that sound?

The problem with the event isn’t the cpl afkers. The problem with the event is those that aren’t afk and can’t handle simple and basic mechanics to complete the fight.

As a whole GW2’s player base has to be one of the lowest skilled in terms of PvE mechanics that I have run across. I’ve played games since Merridian 59, UO, Eq and up to recent titles.

It’s just amazing how bad so many players are or perhaps due to the game design that’s the majority of playes this game attracts.

keep complaining, i’m selfish

Eternal.9148:

i suggest to punish leavers, lower-leveled players, norn, asuras, humans and everyone who breathes aswell. in my experience, afking was the only way after 11 try to get two achievements. deal with it.

^ exactly the way of thought which contributes to the current state of real world.

No thank you. Instead of doing an achievement through an “exploit”, I will not do it at all (since these achievements require me to wait for corrects buffs without crossing lasers and thus not DPS for 75% of my time and thus put other people’s success at risk) and instead post a constructive thread on the forum which can tell devs why their ideas were bad.[/quote]

and that’s where you fail. it’s not exploiting, it’s creative playing.

I say biggest flaw is reward system not the chain of and competing events.
In LA’s rescue you had conflicting events and rewards but citizens savers seemed to forget those that zerged also saved citizens in need if close by. They simply did not spread out in the map for it. Why? Because really it didn’t pay off, there was no rewards and not enough active spawn points to some areas. It was pointless going far away on your own get ganked by a few veteran mobs and then having no spawn close by. Another mistake was also complaining about commander tags. Those could have lead players and zergs to outer locations and help citizens in far places off the map while doing the miasmas there for example, the beautiful result was that everyone then simply just stuck to bank forum area.
And this leads to why i think the design itself isn’t that bad when comes to competing events… do you really think there would be enough people in those events to help you get the 1200 as it was, if you didnt have those farming events inside?

Eternal.9148:

Eternal.9148:

i suggest to punish leavers, lower-leveled players, norn, asuras, humans and everyone who breathes aswell. in my experience, afking was the only way after 11 try to get two achievements. deal with it.

^ exactly the way of thought which contributes to the current state of real world.

No thank you. Instead of doing an achievement through an “exploit”, I will not do it at all (since these achievements require me to wait for corrects buffs without crossing lasers and thus not DPS for 75% of my time and thus put other people’s success at risk) and instead post a constructive thread on the forum which can tell devs why their ideas were bad.

and that’s where you fail. it’s not exploiting, it’s creative playing.

When an encounter is actually rewarding to kill I think less people will be afk.

As it stands now between knights not giving out bags anymore and the 1 in god knows how many chance to get something decent out of the end event chest.

You begin to see why people afk.

I’m not condemning or condoning. The reality is the rewards aren’t good enough for people to care once again.

Invest 1 hr of your time trying your hardest not to fail and playing your heart out only to loose because you are in an instance filled with 20 terrible players who can’t see large glowing icons on the ground.

Afking suddenly looks real good after going through that a few times.

Once again it’s poorly designed content.

Stuff like this should be guild and instance based with pug group options.

Azreell.1568:

Phone call, mouse batteries died, kids woke up,spilled something on your keyboard, went to get a drink.

These are all everyday things that can happen and people need to go afk.

There is nothing that can or should be done with this. Reason being someone can put 10x’s the effort of you in and have to afk for 30 seconds to 1 min for something(stuff happens) and come back. By that time people like you report them.

How right does that sound?

Don’t care to check your mouse batteries? To make sure nothing spills on keyboard? To finish drink and toilet runs before a group event?

Just don’t hope for a full reward then. I’m not suggesting to ban your account for AFKing. I suggest that you get a lot when you do a lot, get something when you do something and get a repair bill and a kick out of the map when you’re doing nothing and simply take up space.

Eternal.9148:

and that’s where you fail. it’s not exploiting, it’s creative playing.

Care to hear a dev’s response to that?

zaybug.9284:

•To discourage zerging in both miasma and escort events, scaling must be made VERY steep. That means that a miasma event should be extremely easily done with 5 players (even the Molten one), however 20 players in the infamous “children escort” would spawn so many champs that they would wipe all these players in 10 seconds (and supposedly despawn after some time).

How is this NOT forcing people to play the way you want?

Because you can still farm in 8 groups of 5 (aka “parties”) instead of 1 group of 40 as easily and as rewarding but also contributing to the event?

Devata.6589:

during the marionette I had the same. I had to do it multiple times and it came up once every x hours so I put my char there waiting for it to pop up. Of course I am not going to stare at my screen the whole time. I do other stuff in the mean time. It happened twice that when I came back there where two chest thanking me for my participation. I did not even do it on purpose but I can understand that some people do it so they can cheat out under the boring grind they might find required to do because of the temporary achievements.

I’m not really against camping your server as long as you do it to participate in the event and not leech. However if you are not considerate enough to come back in time for event, I would prefer the game to remove your character from the map so that active players can join.

Lishtenbird.2814:

Azreell.1568:

Phone call, mouse batteries died, kids woke up,spilled something on your keyboard, went to get a drink.

These are all everyday things that can happen and people need to go afk.

There is nothing that can or should be done with this. Reason being someone can put 10x’s the effort of you in and have to afk for 30 seconds to 1 min for something(stuff happens) and come back. By that time people like you report them.

How right does that sound?

Don’t care to check your mouse batteries? To make sure nothing spills on keyboard? To finish drink and toilet runs before a group event?

Just don’t hope for a full reward then. I’m not suggesting to ban your account for AFKing. I suggest that you get a lot when you do a lot, get something when you do something and get a repair bill and a kick out of the map when you’re doing nothing and simply take up space.

Eternal.9148:

and that’s where you fail. it’s not exploiting, it’s creative playing.

Care to hear a dev’s response to that?

zaybug.9284:

•To discourage zerging in both miasma and escort events, scaling must be made VERY steep. That means that a miasma event should be extremely easily done with 5 players (even the Molten one), however 20 players in the infamous “children escort” would spawn so many champs that they would wipe all these players in 10 seconds (and supposedly despawn after some time).

How is this NOT forcing people to play the way you want?

Because you can still farm in 8 groups of 5 (aka “parties”) instead of 1 group of 40 as easily and as rewarding but also contributing to the event?

Devata.6589:

during the marionette I had the same. I had to do it multiple times and it came up once every x hours so I put my char there waiting for it to pop up. Of course I am not going to stare at my screen the whole time. I do other stuff in the mean time. It happened twice that when I came back there where two chest thanking me for my participation. I did not even do it on purpose but I can understand that some people do it so they can cheat out under the boring grind they might find required to do because of the temporary achievements.

I’m not really against camping your server as long as you do it to participate in the event and not leech. However if you are not considerate enough to come back in time for event, I would prefer the game to remove your character from the map so that active players can join.

Things happen with people. This is not a job and people play for entertainment. If something requires people to go afk – they will. The minute that becomes a problem a lot of people will look for another game.

Problem with your idea of " you get a lot when you do a lot" is it will be based off dps.

Some classes do more some less.

So by your statement I assume you want everyone in game in full zerker meta ?

Sounds like a great plan.

Sign me up – Not.

Azreell.1568:

Problem with your idea of " you get a lot when you do a lot" is it will be based off dps.

Some classes do more some less.

So by your statement I assume you want everyone in game in full zerker meta ?

Sounds like a great plan.

Sign me up – Not.

Did you actually care to read the Equal rewards section? The one that mentions equal rewards for repairing barricades, encouraging NPCs, finding heirlooms etc. etc.?

Azreell.1568:

Things happen with people. This is not a job and people play for entertainment. If something requires people to go afk – they will. The minute that becomes a problem a lot of people will look for another game.

It will be a sad day indeed when all the people who stand in the corner during events decide to go stand in the corner for events in another game.

For people playing that other game, I mean.

timmyf.1490:

Azreell.1568:

Things happen with people. This is not a job and people play for entertainment. If something requires people to go afk – they will. The minute that becomes a problem a lot of people will look for another game.

It will be a sad day indeed when all the people who stand in the corner during events decide to go stand in the corner for events in another game.

For people playing that other game, I mean.

The amusing part is you think that’s the reason why this event has issues and or fails.

Afk’ers are not the problem in the event. A clueless player base when it comes to basic raid mechanics is.

Azreell.1568:

timmyf.1490:

Azreell.1568:

Things happen with people. This is not a job and people play for entertainment. If something requires people to go afk – they will. The minute that becomes a problem a lot of people will look for another game.

It will be a sad day indeed when all the people who stand in the corner during events decide to go stand in the corner for events in another game.

For people playing that other game, I mean.

The amusing part is you think that’s the reason why this event has issues and or fails.

Afk’ers are not the problem in the event. A clueless player base when it comes to basic raid mechanics is.

Problems include:
1) Players not understanding the event or not having appropriate builds for it
2) AFKers
3) Performance issues due to high player count/effects
4) Players leaving when group members in other areas complete their holo event and enter the instance

If this is an overflow then your afking doesn’t even matter because you’re not occupying any slots.

It is not the fault of the people being AFK, it is the fault of bad game design by ANet.

Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

Psychol.5783:

If this is an overflow then your afking doesn’t even matter because you’re not occupying any slots.

You’re occupying slots in the overflow.

Eternal.9148:

i suggest to punish leavers, lower-leveled players, norn, asuras, humans and everyone who breathes aswell. in my experience, afking was the only way after 11 try to get two achievements. deal with it.

While I understand the sentiment, bad programming is causing the achievement problem. If it’s also spawning AFK behavior as a work-around, then perhaps the achievement programming needs to be fixed.

The prime hologram fight is a wonderful example of this in that there are 2 tracks where you can fundamentally AFK to achieve them.
1) Never get hit by the laser fields
2) Never attack them without the proper colouring.

Enter the fight, get your colours, tap the holo a few times and then idle in the corner until that phase ends and you have to deal with the 3 seperatee colours(a little harder to AFK, but probably still possible)..

A guildmate of mine got the achievement for bigger not faster by being dead for the duration of an Assault Knight fight and simply being in the area…

Autumn Frazee.3158:

Necros, Rangers, Mesmers; watch your minions, pets, clones, and phantasms, their damage counts against you if you are not attuned. Engineers, your turrets fall under that category as well. For all professions, I would recommend crafting your build based solely on damage your character does and not use any summons or sources of outside damage.

As far as I dislike AFK achievers, I cannot really blame them at this moment. Just how much help will a mesmer with GS1 and GS3 be? How “skillful” is fighting your instincts for correct skill and weapon rotations? May as well stand in a corner and play TP.

Togashi Jack.9531:

A guildmate of mine got the achievement for bigger not faster by being dead for the duration of an Assault Knight fight and simply being in the area…

The hardest part of this achievement was to convince people not to rez you

Now, regarding the new patch and the “you get a chest if you kill your knight only” combined with “up to 50 players per knight only” thing.

To whomever designed this, this might have looked like a perfect “personal reward” concept; however it’s not. Here’s why.

Scenario 1

• There are 60 people in the map.
• 50 people fight Green knight. They kill it, get a chest and go farming.
• 10 people fight Blue knight. Blue players cannot kill Green knight because it is hardcapped, and they cannot kill Blue knight because they are not enough. They ask for 50 players to split and help, but those refuse and provoke chat flaming. So, it is impossible for them to get the chest.

Scenario 2

• There are 90 people in the map.
• 50 people fight Green knight. They kill it, get a chest and go farming.
• 40 people fight Blue knight. 30 of them are noobs who came to the Blue knight because it was closer, and they get downed on each pull and do next to no damage. The other 10 people cannot kill Green knight because it is hardcapped, and they cannot kill Blue knight because there are not enough skilled players. So, it is impossible for them to get the chest.

So, how is it different from the reward chests in Marionette and Escape from LA?

It’s the fact that in those event it was possible to contribute to the event regardless of other players’ skills. Any player can revive citizens and fight basic mobs for some loot and some contribution towards the global goal; you can hit 100 or 300 citizens or Warden I chest with low amount of players. What about the knights? It is impossible to contribute enough as a single player to get anything; furthermore, it is impossible to contribute to the other part of the fight as it is hardcapped. The important thing is that a personal reward concept should not only be based on personal contribution, it should also imply absolute possibility to contribute personally.

What we have here will ultimately lead to the following scenario:

Scenario 3

• There are 90 people in the map.
• All people will rush to a single knight.
• First 50 people will stay to ensure that they kill the knight and get the chest.
• The other 40 people will leave, cursing the “lucky” ones.
• Events will fail even more because no one will be willing to split and risk a loss of a possible chest.

How it should have been done?

Scenario 4

• There are 60 people in the map.
• 50 people go to Green knight.
• 10 people go to Blue knight, because they know they will get the Green chest once that one is dead, plus they may get a blue one if help arrives.
• When Green knight is close to death, people start switching to Blue knight, because they know they will get the Green chest and may get a blue one if they try hard enough.
• They finish both knights, and ALL players receive 2 chests – one per knight.
• People decide to try harder next time with more people to get all 3 chests.

For me as a player, it is pretty evident what gonna work and what not. Why is it not for developers, even with all the feedback provided? No idea.

timmyf.1490:

ArenaNet: PLEASE at least add an option for Leeching to the report menu so we can correctly identify why we are reporting a player. The AFKers try to scare people away from reporting them by saying “You can’t report me, there’s not an AFK option, you’ll get in trouble instead for a false report” which keeps a lot of people from filing the report.

If the people you are seeking to report for being AFK are saying anything at all in chat, including the message you quote, then they are, by definition, not AFK. You cannot type, “You can’t report me, there’s not an AFK option, you’ll get in trouble instead for a false report,” while, “Away From Keyboard.”

So technically they would be right. You would be sending a false report because you would be accusing them of something they have not done.

Ashen.2907:

If the people you are seeking to report for being AFK are saying anything at all in chat, including the message you quote, then they are, by definition, not AFK. You cannot type, “You can’t report me, there’s not an AFK option, you’ll get in trouble instead for a false report,” while, “Away From Keyboard.”

So technically they would be right. You would be sending a false report because you would be accusing them of something they have not done.

People call it “AFK” because it’s short. To be precise, it’s “idling” – which is actually abusing a game flaw for personal profit, thus exploiting.

Lishtenbird.2814:

Ashen.2907:

If the people you are seeking to report for being AFK are saying anything at all in chat, including the message you quote, then they are, by definition, not AFK. You cannot type, “You can’t report me, there’s not an AFK option, you’ll get in trouble instead for a false report,” while, “Away From Keyboard.”

So technically they would be right. You would be sending a false report because you would be accusing them of something they have not done.

People call it “AFK” because it’s short. To be precise, it’s “idling” – which is actually abusing a game flaw for personal profit, thus exploiting.

Raising the participation requirements for event rewards should address any concern about, “idling,” players without labeling those who enjoy watching aspects of online games as exploiters.

I didn’t do this event very often (I play very sporadically) but I started keeping count of the citizens I had individually saved and figured out that I average around 30-50 civilians rescued by myself as a level 38-40 warrior. I didn’t do the event long enough to nail down the most optimal spot, but my general tactic was simply to look for somewhere citizens spawned that there weren’t other people, rescue them, and then distract enemies on their route to the Whisper’s Agent until the citizens got to safety.

The problem then with this event, at least from my 2-3 day observations, was that people preferred to lump together in a giant mass around the gate entrance rather than spread throughout the zone. Couple that with the events trying to scale to this massive hoard and you have a recipe for lag, routinely failed events, and routinely failed civilian quotas.

But trying to get the hoard from mindlessly following each other is like trying to get AFKers to return to their seat.

If each person participating was responsible for saving 40 civilians, and I consider that a modest number given my level and what I was actually capable of doing, you would only ever need, at minimum, 37.5 players in the entire zone.

Warkupo.1025:

The problem then with this event, at least from my 2-3 day observations, was that people preferred to lump together in a giant mass around the gate entrance rather than spread throughout the zone. Couple that with the events trying to scale to this massive hoard and you have a recipe for lag, routinely failed events, and routinely failed civilian quotas.

But trying to get the hoard from mindlessly following each other is like trying to get AFKers to return to their seat.

If each person participating was responsible for saving 40 civilians, and I consider that a modest number given my level and what I was actually capable of doing, you would only ever need, at minimum, 37.5 players in the entire zone.

This is an interesting point. Perhaps people participating in zergs should be reported for AFKing because they are in zone in a manner likely to cause event failure.

Warkupo.1025:

If each person participating was responsible for saving 40 civilians, and I consider that a modest number given my level and what I was actually capable of doing, you would only ever need, at minimum, 37.5 players in the entire zone.

Well, that number depends on location. I based my estimate on my preferred location, the Western Ward Waypoint which I considered “medium” difficulty. It was not too easy as some “easy” no-escort eastern paths and not too unrewarding for solo players as “difficult” Hooligan’s Route, and I spent quite a lot of time killing mobs and stealthing NPCs running past them (which was rather fun because of the unique mechanics of Toxic Alliance cooperation).

But yes, I think that some sort of turning encouragements into more of micro-events similar to escorts and defends (which give loot AND exp+karma) or providing/requiring some sort of personal reward for citizens would have naturally split the zergers and encouraged AFKers to do more. With that in mind, the original 1500 number would have been easily obtainable, and even higher tiers could have been possible. The fact that the tier was lowered to 1200 from 1500 clearly shows us that devs underestimated the zerg mentality of the average map player base.

Ashen.2907:

Raising the participation requirements for event rewards should address any concern about, “idling,” players without labeling those who enjoy watching aspects of online games as exploiters.

You enjoy watching “aspects”? No problem, but the “aspects” you watched would be the only thing you carry out of the event areas. No AP, no loot for you, sorry. If it’s fine with you – it’s fine with me; but please be considerate enough not to do it in the main server as I and other 149 players come to play there and it is really hard to get in during LS releases.

Ashen.2907:

This is an interesting point. Perhaps people participating in zergs should be reported for AFKing because they are in zone in a manner likely to cause event failure.

Sarcasm aside, people participating in zergs should either be (properly) made a part of the global event or excluded from the global event reward altogether. As long as people are encouraged by both fight mechanics and rewards to zerg everything, people will keep coming to the forum to protect zergers because that is the path of least resistance and highest reward.

Lishtenbird.2814:

Ashen.2907:

If the people you are seeking to report for being AFK are saying anything at all in chat, including the message you quote, then they are, by definition, not AFK. You cannot type, “You can’t report me, there’s not an AFK option, you’ll get in trouble instead for a false report,” while, “Away From Keyboard.”

So technically they would be right. You would be sending a false report because you would be accusing them of something they have not done.

People call it “AFK” because it’s short. To be precise, it’s “idling” – which is actually abusing a game flaw for personal profit, thus exploiting.

After playing this content countless times now my suggestion to the GW2 player base would be worry about yourself first because I have never met a more skill less group of players in terms of pve then I have in this game.

Once again those cpl people sitting afk are not the reason you are failing the event. You are failing the event because the gw2 populous can’t see huge glowing circles on the ground or have no ability to dodge telegraphic mechanics. Add into the fact that apparently having to stand on pads to get 3 buffs is very stressful and confusing to most who play this game.

When you start loosing the event due to afk’ers then we can have a conversation.

Until then, You people should be looking in the mirror – not at other people.

Azreell.1568:

After playing this content countless times now my suggestion to the GW2 player base would be worry about yourself first because I have never met a more skill less group of players in terms of pve then I have in this game.

Once again those cpl people sitting afk are not the reason you are failing the event. You are failing the event because the gw2 populous can’t see huge glowing circles on the ground or have no ability to dodge telegraphic mechanics. Add into the fact that apparently having to stand on pads to get 3 buffs is very stressful and confusing to most who play this game.

When you start loosing the event due to afk’ers then we can have a conversation.

Until then, You people should be looking in the mirror – not at other people.

Are you using “learn 2 play” as a defense for “I’m not playing, I’m just sitting in the corner so I can get rewards?”

You’re telling some people that they should learn to play better as a defense for not playing at all.

timmyf.1490:

Azreell.1568:

After playing this content countless times now my suggestion to the GW2 player base would be worry about yourself first because I have never met a more skill less group of players in terms of pve then I have in this game.

Once again those cpl people sitting afk are not the reason you are failing the event. You are failing the event because the gw2 populous can’t see huge glowing circles on the ground or have no ability to dodge telegraphic mechanics. Add into the fact that apparently having to stand on pads to get 3 buffs is very stressful and confusing to most who play this game.

When you start loosing the event due to afk’ers then we can have a conversation.

Until then, You people should be looking in the mirror – not at other people.

Are you using “learn 2 play” as a defense for “I’m not playing, I’m just sitting in the corner so I can get rewards?”

You’re telling some people that they should learn to play better as a defense for not playing at all.

My point is simple.

When you design content that requires 50-60+ pug players that I have to rely on in order to get any rewards for an hrs time investment – Yes , people will get discouraged after wasting that much time.

I can play my heart out, do my rotation properly, maximize my dps and utilites, bring all required consumable food to ensure I preform at 100% , have the most optimal spec and gear and at the end of the day it will not effect the fight outcome at all since you have people who can’t even dodge as an example.

So yes I am using that as a defense as I can understand why people would sit afk in the corner.

Azreell.1568:

When you design content that requires 50-60+ pug players that I have to rely on in order to get any rewards for an hrs time investment – Yes , people will get discouraged after wasting that much time.

I can play my heart out, do my rotation properly, maximize my dps and utilites, bring all required consumable food to ensure I preform at 100% , have the most optimal spec and gear and at the end of the day it will not effect the fight outcome at all since you have people who can’t even dodge as an example.

So yes I am using that as a defense as I can understand why people would sit afk in the corner.

Right, but idling in the corner just EXACERBATES this problem. Going AFK makes you considerably less reliable than people who are at least attempting to do the content.

Or rather, you’re reliably useless.