Guild Wars 2

Honestly, I just plan on completely ignoring this. I got way too much other stuff to be concerned about.

I saw the patch notes stating there was a new festival and logged in. No welcome mail telling me where to go so I read the patch notes again which told me it’s in the Crown Pavilion. I go there and…where’s the festival?

We have a PVP game and…what? There aren’t any other activites to do and no real rewards to speak of, just some rng food drops and trash in the envelopes.

This feels like something someone threw together over the weekend to give us something to do. I know Anet typically does smaller scale things now, but this is kinda disappointing.

As a festival it is a bit underwhelming and I am quite sure that I won’t dive too deeply into it (Dragon Ball misses several things to make it enjoyable for me, like rewards for participation or rewards for your contribution; if you end up in teams that suck you get nothing, no matter how good you personnally have been).

But there is still so much else to do so it is not a huge letdown. You didn’t waste a sub rate for this event, you know. It’s just a free option.

It is rather underwhelming. To the point I wonder why ANet bothered to release it.

If it’s supposed to be similar to the June dragon festival in Guild Wars 1
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Dragon_Festival

Shing Jea Boardwalk, Dragon Arena, and Rollerbeetle Races open.

4 quests
1) The Rampaging Yetis (rewards 40 Victory Tokens)
2) The Shrine of Maat (rewards 50 Victory Tokens)
3) A Strange Request (rewards 60 Victory Tokens)
4) Darkness at Kaitan (rewards 90 Victory Tokens)
And 7 missions
1) Haiju Lagoon
2) Jaya Bluffs
3) Tsumei Village
4) Seitung Harbor
5) Tsumei Village
6) Seitung Harbor
7) Shing Jea Monastery
Then a finale event at the end.

If it’s supposed to be similar to the Canthan New Years in Jan/Feb
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Canthan_New_Year

Each Canthan New Year will make the Shing Jea Boardwalk, Dragon Arena, and Rollerbeetle Racing available for use as well. Lunar Tokens also randomly drop from PvE foes for the duration of the event.

Quests
1) Hapless Chong
2) Just My Luck
3) Coordinator Tahyaa
4) Fire in the Sky
5) The Big Bang
6) Hai Len
7) Hopeless Romantic
8) Ikura
9) Take My Sister, Please
10) Johai Sohn
11) The Knights Who Say Nian
12) Elder Nofuun
13) Douse Your Enthusiasm
or
14) Fehj
15) A Burning Desire

As well as the big cook off where people gathered ingredients around the world:
Several chefs stand in Shing Jea Monastery. They collect specific ingredients during the finale. For each ingredient your character turns in, you receive a Lunar Token from that chef.

And 3 fully decorated towns.

As I said, a trifle underwhelming and I’m not sure why they even bothered.

I do think a letter would’ve been a good idea. Otherwise, the only things about this that depress me are:

• Too many interrupts needed for Dragon’s Gaze achievement
• No Zhaitaffy ;-;

Anyandrell.6238:

lordkrall.7241:

Were was the PvP side of all the Living Story events?

Not all events have to have content for all parts of the game.

I think you somehow confuse Living Story (which is like Personal Story, and no PvP in that either) with festivals. Festivals are like Wintersday – with PvP style as well as PvE style events.

But there is a PvE side to this event: You can buy envelopes und light fire crackers in PvE.
scnr. ;-)

I do feel the gold event star could’ve been a little more informative of what’s going on. Yes, Lunar New Year is going on, celebrating the year of the Ram and so on, but it could at least say that it’s happening in Divinity’s Reach.

As for the event itself, if it’s just the red envelopes and Dragon Bash, I’m disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, Dragon Ball isn’t that bad (and I barely PvP), but I was hoping for at least one other event, or possibly something dropping in the open world. As for Dragon Ball battles itself, how come we can’t get a reward chest giving us one small red envelope, or something similar? Anything would be better than an empty feeling for winning. I wonder if most people just gave up before even getting 10 wins (like I did, and many others mentioned).

Here is my criticism of the event:

• Rewards need tweaking, especially for Dragonball. Losing gets you nothing. Winning…gets you nothing. Not until you win 10 rounds. Rewards don’t have to be much. Little red envelope would do enough for winner rewards. Losers could get some of the holiday vendor trash, I guess. Or nothing, that’s fine too. In short, there needs to be a reason to play more than just the 2 games required for daily.

• Speaking of dailies, these need some tweaking. For one, the firecracker daily just doesn’t register some firecrackers, and with only 6 present in the game (for a given player), this just does not work. While fixing the bug is important anyway, there really need to be a lot more firecrackers to light.

Second, the dragonball dailies are annoying. The “participate in 2” is okay, but some people just AFK in there. The “win 5” is not okay, since people keep leaving when they start losing. The matchmaking is not good either, since a winning team stays together, resulting in good players all being on the same teams and nobody else having a shot. Instead of the “win 5”, I suggest achievements related to specific activities in Dragonball, like picking up each powerup or killing X players.

• More in-game info on the festival would be much appreciated. An addition to the festival star saying it’s in Divinity’s Reach is the least that could be added, but a letter promoting the event would also be good.

• Actual rewards (when you get them) are good. Kudos here.

Yep, went to the designated festival area; btw what the kitten is with all the festivals only being in DR now? I took one look around and saw that the only mini game being offered involved (yet again) beating on my fellow man, and decided that silverwaste farming was gonna have to tide me over for a while longer.

C’est la vie, but it would have been nice to have even a simple ring toss for a stuffed ram as a prize added.

Vepo.4208:

2) If you spent 10 gold, you’ll get 9 gold back, if you don’t get lucky with getting some extra things, but the amount of gold requested and the possible return is just all about luck/rng, but remember you are never forced into buying them. However; I can understand that some people may find this frustrating.

I spent 1 gold, and got barely half of that back, so I must’ve been REALLY unlucky.

Iyeru.5240:

I spent 1 gold, and got barely half of that back, so I must’ve been REALLY unlucky.

You are guaranteed to at least get 88.88s back when you spend 1g on an envelope.

Kal Spiro.9745:

You shouldn’t have to leave the game and investigate the rules and structure in order to participate in a limited time event.

This is the first time I participated in this event. (I wasn’t around for it the last time they had this)

I was able to pick up on what all the skills do within 2-3 rounds. I was having a blast as I played about 30 matches yesterday. I only won about 10 of my matches, but many of them were pretty close. (That feeling when you’re down 400 to 480 and you come back to win)

Also, I was awarded 2 Laurels for completing the DB daily, was it only supposed to be 1?

The DR festival area is amazing but where is the draw to bring players to the area? Only one achievement takes place in the area. The rest take place in the Dragon Ball arena which is just a sewer.

I’d like to see some open world participation or human outposts and something far more involved in the festival area. Even things as mundane as “View the Fireworks Display” like we had for Dragon Bash.

Underwhelming is definitely the word. I realize that HoT is likely demanding the ram’s share (see what I did there?) of Anet’s resources but this is the first non-western Holiday event in GW2 since the Chinese release. It should be more of a production than this.

They’re getting desperate because LS is dead and the expansion is still many months away – meaning no new content for about half a year. They had to do crap events like this to keep us distracted.

Underwhelming sums it up for me.

Dragons Gaze really sucks. It encourages players to play wrong and needs to go.

There is not enough in the game UI to let players know that there is even an event goin on.

Dragon arenas ought to reward something, anything after games. The opportunity o buy a gamble box isn’t enough.

Players who volunteer for an unto balance shouldn’t get stuck with a loss. Fix this in keg brawl too.

The foods are good I like the stats and the limited time magic find. However, in contrast to the dragon bash Zhaitaffy foods, these seem to be too limited. You will never be able to buy them in bulk, because bulk will never exist.

The backpiece is nice.

Did I mention that Dragon’s Gaze really sucks? 2nd worst Achievement after keg brawl recoveries (worst does not mean hardest or most grindy)

maddoctor.2738:

Ardenwolfe.8590:

For those that didn’t notice, there’s a big gold star and announcement on the right side of your in-game screen. . . .

And that star contains absolutely no info as to where to go for that event… A simple “Visit Divinity’s Reach to join the festivities” would be nice.

My guess is they assumed people associate the Crown Pavilion with festivals now. I know I did as soon as I saw there was a festival and didn’t clearly see it stated where it was, I just went to Crown Pavilion and there it was.

I think it’s fair to say that Crown Pavilion will be the festival headquarters from this point forward.

So when another festival comes around, try checking the Pavilion.

I think this video sums up this patch perfectly…

Vepo.4208:

1)

Exactly what I said. From other festivals you had a letter in your mail giving you the details. You should not have to question in game or check twitter, reddit or the wiki. Period.

Vepo.4208:

2)….

Nobody forces you, but being a “festival” they should give a little bit of thought on the specific player pool, not trying to implement a strategy that works wonders in the Asian markets for the NA/EU. The only thing that they did good (probably there was a smart guy this time when they had the meeting about how to handle this) was to actually give a decent RNG chance to getting more money than you put in. Nevertheless, it is a poorly done thing. IF they would have put some more sought after possible reward (see the chinese dragon mini, for example) and make the timegate shorter, there would have been a serious money-sink. Otherwise, yea, some festival activity: play the lottery for firecrackers and rice cakes. A festival with two events, one being a PvP and the other one a RNG. Awesome!

Vepo.4208:

3)

I didn’t mention it because I didn’t honestly see the need to have this half a mile long post describing all my dialogues.

Vepo.4208:

4)

Again, I didn’t feel the need to describe step by step, but it seems that otherwise you don’t get what I meant. Here we go:
Me: Ok so where are the vendors?
Other Player (OP): where you see the festival icon on the map
Me: I AM at the festival icon and all I see is a crowd of names
OP2: there (sic) here, just look around
Me: (disable UI in the hopes that by removing player names I might be able to see the vendors – nope, all I see is a mass of players, limbs and heads and pets interlocked) decide to just run around watching for the “F: Talk” option to appear.
OP3: why don’t these firecrackers register in the dailies?
Me: (wth firecrackers? where?) running around “F:Interact” appears and I set off firecrackers hanging on the Chinese-style gate. check dailies; in local chat “It didn’t register for me either”
OP4: did you find firecrackers? where?
Me(whisper to OP4): right where I am, party me so you can find me in this crowd, but I don’t think these are the firecrackers we’re supposed to set off
OP4 (whisper to me after partying): cool, now look where I am, this is the vendor with the envelopes.

This is pretty much how it went, you think you might have understood my communication skills, Vepo?

Vepo.4208:

5)

You miss the point. It’s not about what I enjoy to do or not, or about free content or not. It’s about a festival that was put out just half-kittened.

Vepo.4208:

My final conclusion: You have the ability to use the chat to ask questions to those, who may have more information that yourself. You should not be afraid to ask or even the read the chat, which I’m pretty sure others will be asking the same questions you have in mind.

However; even with the perfect event, with all form of media used to inform people, someone somewhere would complain about something.

Read above. Then maybe you’ll realize that from up there on the high horse you’ve put yourself on, you might not be able to see things right.

Also, this is not a perfect event. It did not have “all form of media used to inform people”. And this is not a complaint. It is a constructive criticism. If you didn’t figure it out, oh well, it’s free, nobody asked you to understand it, and nobody forces you to like it. You should not be afraid to ask or even try to read again the post – I’m sure many helpful people would be happy to explain it to you.

I agree that all festivals and temporary events should be accompanied by a letter giving some information and a location. That’s simply good logical planning.

I get bored quickly with all the PVP-related mini-games in festivals. Would be nice to have more PVE-style activities overall, but this is obviously a small event.

I do miss how Dragon Bash had stuff happening all over the world if you wanted to go do things in other zones (at least I recall that it did, for a while every festival had “nodes” in the maps). And yes, it took a teensy bit of searching to find it, I wasn’t teleported straight to it upon logging in. Then again I do read patch notes, even little ones, in case there is something of interest.

Now, I may be the oddball one for once, but I actually like Dragon Ball despite my normal loathing for PvP. I don’t even mind losing. It’s just a fun arena to run around in thanks to the jump pads and spin disks. I’ve only done 2 or 3 games a day, because I don’t love it enough to be unable to chat with friends, and I think only been in one win. Even so, it’s a pleasant diversion.

The way I figure, this isn’t something meant to hold our rapt attention 100%, it’s just some bonus stuff as a fun aside for those interested. A few art assets and a minigame not seen for a long time, given to us while they continue to hone HoT, I’ve no complaint.

Dragon Ball is terrible and boring. It’s a snowball fight in the same confined space, over and over again. I hate PvP to begin with, and I’d still rather zerg in EOTM than play Dragon Ball.

I do appreciate free content and new activities, but DB is no fun and a chore since it’s needed for the daily… and it is kitten hard to say no to a laurel.

I like the “pop the festive fireworks” thing, but I wish there were more of them all over DR. I’d love an excuse to run around DR more. Also, the effect could be more flashy, especially when you watch someone else pop the firework.

Envelopes are meh. I like extra luck essences as much as the next guy, but at the end of the day it’s just a gold sink lottery. You know what they call lottery? Idiot tax.

I missed the previous Lunar Festival and it sounds like it was a friggin’ blast. I see people walk around with those jade weapon skins and I’m dead jealous. Why can’t we have that again?

I do like the outfit, if it came in separate pieces I’d buy it in an eyeblink (those dragon shoulder pads!). As is it looks kind of odd on my white dude character.

After comparing the Guild Wars 1 festivals to this one, it’s like a “pity festival”. They threw a bone to us chew on to keep us out of their hair.

How this festival makes me feel:

Dragon Bash in June 2013 was such fun! The holographic enemies to kill, what 300 gave you a mini (not sure, but I got them all) Bashing Dragon effigies, the fireworks in LA were outstanding. Didn’t play DragonBall then, and don’t plan on it now, and certainly not going to sink a- bunch of gold that I’m saving into envelopes. Not to mention the fact that only the Chinese version of the game can get the mini dragon pet. Oh well. … I’d have rather seen SAB come back (and I don’t do that either)

The first year of festivals were absolutely amazing, open world content, nice loot/rewards, and tons of fun (didn’t even mind spending $ to WP all over Tyria) – Now it’s go to Divinity’s Reach, enjoy…

Yeah, the open-world festival content was way more fun than porting to DR and running through an instance portal. I liked getting festival-related loot from killing mobs everywhere I chose to play.

This event isn’t Dragon Bash though and is the first time we’ve had something like this. The only thing from Dragon Bash that we have is the activity. The only comparison that we have to go with is what they just finished almost a week ago in GW1 (and years before). Could they have added some open world tasks that you could do to earn something such as a mini? Probably.

Kentaine.4692:

Yeah, a little miffed at the event too. It’s clearly a PvP oriented event, and I’ve decided to not care about it tomorrow especially since I clicked ALL of the firecrackers in Divinity’s Reach and WvW citadel and still didn’t get the daily. I’m sitting at 4/5 lit and I think there’s about 20 of them which meant only 1 in 5 registered I’d clicked them (bug?)… unless I can light the ones in opposing server citadels (not going to happen).

I haven’t won a single Dragon Ball game (I doubt there’s any system organized to place me with similarly skilled players for this like they say exists in PvP even though I still lose 3 out of 4 games in PvP despite being the top scorer on my team in 3/5 of my games) and only one of them was a close game.

I don’t know about WvW or if they even work, but there are 5 total in DR. 4 are on the ground and obvious, the fifth is up on top of the pagoda and you have to jump around to reach it.

So I just straight up hate this event now. Basically my strategy is, pop all the crackers in DR. Lose two matches of Dragon Ball because that seems to be the only thing I can do. Then do a daily and between those open six envelopes for the event daily and be done with it.

Kal Spiro.9745:

So I just straight up hate this event now. Basically my strategy is, pop all the crackers in DR. Lose two matches of Dragon Ball because that seems to be the only thing I can do. Then do a daily and between those open six envelopes for the event daily and be done with it.

Have you been stalking me? That’s exactly what I do!
…maybe I’ll change it up and lose the DBall matches first instead.

Assuming that the current Lunar New Year Festival is supposed to more or less correspond to the Dragon Bash, it falls way short. We have the Dragon Ball activity, a new Vendor, and a lightly decorated Queen’s Pavilion.

With Dragon Bash we had THIS! …

Hamfast.8719:

Assuming that the current Lunar New Year Festival is supposed to more or less correspond to the Dragon Bash, it falls way short. We have the Dragon Ball activity, a new Vendor, and a lightly decorated Queen’s Pavilion.

With Dragon Bash we had THIS! …

Fortunately this isn’t dragon bash and hopefully we’ll see it this summer and even better than it was before.

I admit that the mini festival is not overly fun, however, one thing they got right was the absolutely brilliant gold sink! Now, I would of preferred the expected return to be a bit lower with the addition of more cool stuff available from the envelopes instead (that don’t vendor for much – skins and such) – but they need to do this in the future for other events! We already know people like to “gamble” – might as well have more fun ways to do it!

I don’t really get the whole gold sink aspect. GW2 doesn’t need gold sinks. The TP trends don’t reflect a game in which the majority of players have too much money. The economy seems just fine.

Games like LOTRO and Rift, however, benefit from gold sinks. Of course, LOTRO is on its last leg, so the economy is a moot point.

This was not the experience I would have expected considering all the negativity regarding the so-called, “Mystic Toilet”.

Celtic Lady.3729:

I don’t really get the whole gold sink aspect. GW2 doesn’t need gold sinks. The TP trends don’t reflect a game in which the majority of players have too much money. The economy seems just fine.

Because we have gold sinks.

The argument you’re making is similar to the argument people make for not vaccinating their children. They see that the diseases appear to no longer be a threat, and then choose to remove the thing that keeps it from being a threat, thus making it a threat, again.

To be less politically charged about it, the gold sinks keep inflation in check, in theory. I’ve been in games where there was no reliable gold sink . . . yeah. Yeah . . .

I’d rather have the occasional gold sink for people to decide to risk or not on their whims rather than “10k gold for a Lodestone is a steal”.

Yeah, we have permanent gold sinks, which serve their purpose just fine. These temporary ones are the unnecessary ones. Sorry for not specifying.

Celtic Lady.3729:

Yeah, we have permanent gold sinks, which serve their purpose just fine. These temporary ones are the unnecessary ones. Sorry for not specifying.

I am not actually sure they are.
We have had a massive influx of gold and such due to the release of Silverwastes. Thus a temporarily larger gold sink is probably needed in order to try and stabalize the economy a bit.

Hamfast.8719:

Assuming that the current Lunar New Year Festival is supposed to more or less correspond to the Dragon Bash, it falls way short. We have the Dragon Ball activity, a new Vendor, and a lightly decorated Queen’s Pavilion.

With Dragon Bash we had THIS! …

Dragon Bash was fantastic and should be an annual event. The food alone was worth My time. This event is a lousy replacement and I don’t Even bother with it.

Aidenwolf.5964:

Hamfast.8719:

Assuming that the current Lunar New Year Festival is supposed to more or less correspond to the Dragon Bash, it falls way short. We have the Dragon Ball activity, a new Vendor, and a lightly decorated Queen’s Pavilion.

With Dragon Bash we had THIS! …

Dragon Bash was fantastic and should be an annual event. The food alone was worth My time. This event is a lousy replacement and I don’t Even bother with it.

Are you sure it’s a replacement? For some reason people got the idea that this event was Dragon Bash when it’s not. This is the first time that we have had this event in GW2. The only similarities that the current even has with Dragon Bash is the activity.

In GW1, we had the lunar festival which is what this event is. GW1’s version is superior still. GW1 also had the dragon festival which Dragon Bash is supposedly based off of. Also, the entire premise of Dragon Bash doesn’t fit with the one for this event.

The arena lags so badly. Rubber banding, cast delay, projectile delay…. Thank goodness its only for two unbearable rounds then i’m free to do something else.

Can’t even talk in party chat to organise tactics. So essentially that makes it problematic for a team arena.

Ayrilana.1396:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Hamfast.8719:

Assuming that the current Lunar New Year Festival is supposed to more or less correspond to the Dragon Bash, it falls way short. We have the Dragon Ball activity, a new Vendor, and a lightly decorated Queen’s Pavilion.

With Dragon Bash we had THIS! …

Dragon Bash was fantastic and should be an annual event. The food alone was worth My time. This event is a lousy replacement and I don’t Even bother with it.

Are you sure it’s a replacement? For some reason people got the idea that this event was Dragon Bash when it’s not. This is the first time that we have had this event in GW2. The only similarities that the current even has with Dragon Bash is the activity.

In GW1, we had the lunar festival which is what this event is. GW1’s version is superior still. GW1 also had the dragon festival which Dragon Bash is supposedly based off of. Also, the entire premise of Dragon Bash doesn’t fit with the one for this event.

Chinese New Year (named for the “beast of the year”). Year of the Dragon. Year of the Ram. That’s what I’m going off of. I can’t wait until the “Year of the Monkey” when SAB is year-round, and using a waypoint activates 10 minutes of Bobblehead effect.

I’m not really sure I want my mailbox full of festival info. Is there a festival thread on these forums? How many festivals does this game usually run? Are the festival hand-outs good? Are rewards account-bound? I wont work my donkey off for account bound items sorry I hate that.

Most games have a holiday festival thread dedicated solely to non-gamish related events. If this forum does not then bing suggestion. Along those thoughts does GW2 have mini-games?

Drow.2081:

I’m not really sure I want my mailbox full of festival info. Is there a festival thread on these forums? How many festivals does this game usually run? Are the festival hand-outs good? Are rewards account-bound? I wont work my donkey off for account bound items sorry I hate that.

Most games have a holiday festival thread dedicated solely to non-gamish related events. If this forum does not then bing suggestion.

Usually the ANet team sends one brief game mail that appears when you log in. It doesn’t give specifics other than to tell you there is something going on and then telling you where to get started.

They also generally send out a more detailed real e-mail, but I usually don’t get that until after I’ve logged in anyway. That could be coincidence based on my time zone and normal gameplay time, but I suppose it’s possible that it only goes out after you’ve logged in.

You certainly won’t ever have either your game mail or your real e-mail “clogged” with festival information. Most specific details (for events and rewards, etc.) can be found on the WIKI, or 3rd party support sites like Dulfy.

There were no notifications about the current festival for some reason. Sometimes, if a festival is long enough, or big enough (Wintersday, Halloween, Festival of the Four Winds), ANet will have a section set aside for discussion. Not this time.

In-game you can type /WIKI Lunar New Year for a start on the current festival. Most new content (festivals, Living World updates, etc.) tends to have a 2 week time period.