Guild Wars 2

Rin of Rivvinda.4971:

@ Nabrok.9023,

Why do players do tier 1 or 2, well thats pretty easy, NOT every guild is super organized and willing to go on team speak and everything to do a bounty hunting mission. For them it is as good as impossible to complete a tier 3 for merits, so they have to settle for a completer tier 1 or 2 so you at least get some merits in instead of attempting trier 3 over and over again and failing over and over again getting no merits in. NOT everyone finds these bounties super easy. Some guilds are to small to get a tier 3 done, others have lots of members who are not that hard core players that they will go to all extremes to get it done (yes for a lot of players it is not common to use voicechat to play a game and for then that is surely considered to be extreme) As i stated before their should be something for everyone, if you look for a challenge it should be provided by ADDING one, and not by scaling every else thing up. ( I fully agree that if you complete a bigger challenge you should also get a bigger reward, and i actually like the reward scaling between the current tiers, you get more for a tier 3 but this is not an extreme amount more although still enough to get some missions a bit faster) Yes we don’t make so many merits as you would with a tier 3 so yes we have to wait longer to get new missions open but we can actually complete the lower ones so you at least get some in.

I Agree with you that when you already have your merits for the week, a trier 3 is the best way to go for everyone who missed his/her personal reward for that week, as you have 6 changes to get an easy boss that everyone can help to kill.

Please keep in mind that not every group / guild is the same, what is easy for one group can be a real challenge for an other.

ok, fair enough. It’s not always easy for us (a fairly large guild) either. Even with using mumble and pre-scouting we failed our first attempt at a tier 3 last week. Got it on the second try, but it took about an hour to get it all done.

This week on the other hand went very well, we got it done in record time. We even had a Trek for the first time, did a T1 and a T3, and it still took less time than it did last week. I guess we did get a bit lucky, as all our targets for the bounty were ones that we had managed to pre-scout (we don’t scout all 15 before starting).

This is a follow-up to my previous post aiming to offer some ideas proposed by members of the DragonSeason [DS] of Aurora Glade, with the intention to make the Guild Bounty a better working and more fun to play experience for all.

@Redstar said “What bugs me is that most of the time, guilds aren’t doing the bounties “blindly” : they use guides. Which is understandable because the hints don’t really match with the routes of some monsters.”

The general feeling is that Anet has introduced a game mode that is heavily dependant on guild intercommunication without first implementing the necessary tools for this. Using the /map chat and multiple voice communication programs simultaneously, combined with out-of-game guides/maps is far from fun and efficient. It’s anything but. It also shutters the sense of immersion which is of the utmost importance to any genre of game as everyone knows.

Also the UI needs to be re-designed asap: being able to monitor the names of the targets and the total time remaining is a must-have, even if this involves temporarily turning off other displayed info – such as the daily achievements – to make room for it.

On top of these, there is always the chance that your tracked target will be hunted down by members of another guild doing THEIR bounty. This is something that may make sense from a real-life aspect, but totally sucks in terms of entertainment. Just because of this fact it is getting pretty common lately to NOT see anyone reply to your question “Have you seen X recently?” on the map channel. There was even one case when someone tried to mislead me, by linking a waypoint in Cursed Shore – but this was an isolated incident. @Talindra offers a solution along the same lines presented in detail by our member, Achilles, here. Basically both of them suggest the use of instanced mini-dungeons where the bounty will take place.

Last but certainly not least is the matter of pre-event scouting being so isolated from the event itself. Some people have suggested there should be no pre-scouting needed for the execution of the event, while others proposed an extension of the time frame to make the scouting process part of the main event. We are in favor of the latter approach – this is a bounty hunt anyway (remember “Django” anyone?). However, our feeling is that the whole scouting process needs to be re-designed.

One idea is to have a ‘scout’ role (costume) available for the duration of the event only. This could be purchased with karma or merit and, like any other costume, will provide a set of skills to the wearer suitable for locating the target: Long-Range Scan (North-South/East-West indication), Short-Range Scan (ping on map, long cooldown), Rabbit Chase (obvious) – these 3 should suffice we think. This will be a lot of fun, they create a dedicated role that people would love to play and it is also within the game’s capabilities as it stands now (minimal programming effort, some artistic workload required).

An alternative would be to have ‘snitch’ NPCs scattered throughout each map, offering hints leading to the target’s location: “he just walked by, heading north”, or “rumor has it he was spotted crossing the Cascade Bridge”, or “someone told me they saw her passed out on Bad Omen Beach” etc. This will make people think and also learn the names of a lot of Tyria’s beautiful places. As far as we are in any position to know or estimate, this solution wouldn’t be very difficult to implement.

Please contribute to our… brain hurricane here! Help make Bounties as fun as they were intended to be.

No replies/suggestions here, not from devs (not that I was expecting any, judging from the narrow-minded denial with which they choose to ‘deal’ with this major issue) and not from fans either

Anyway, as a closing (?) note:
we, DragonSeason of Aurora Glade, have decided to stop doing T3 Bounties until the entire feature is fixed.

Yesterday we failed 5 Bounty events, four of which because of Sotzz coming up! I know the odds of getting 4/5 times Sotzz -or any other target, but only HE is a real issue- selected in the draw are very slim, but that does not change the facts. And the facts are that, aside from any other problems that may or may not exist, this specific NPC is bugged. Period. Last time ANY barrels have been spotted on our server were sometime last week.

For the record, we use pre-scouting and we’d scouted out ALL non-random spawning targets prior to starting the event. It was supposed to be a sure success. We had an excess of 40 people attending. Pretty darn well organized operation. Sotzz comes up, we let it fail. Second attempt, Sotzz again. Third attempt -and that was our big break- we blew it on 2-Mult, underestimating its powers. Fourth attempt had Sotzz again and we let it expire once more. Our final try again had Sotzz but we decided, just for the sake of our justifiably frustrated and even outraged members to do the other 5 targets. Needless to say that during the 2 hours we wasted, other guilds were killing off our targets as we were stalking them and we would have to locate them again, etc.

Sotzz seems to be working fine after the March update (maybe it’s a server reboot thing?), but since you’re in this thread I’d like to complain about the rat trainer a bit. I feel finding this particular target is way too random and luck-based. Sending 4-5 people through a zone frantically clicking on tiny rats isn’t my idea of a real good time, wouldn’t you agree? I think there needs to be less randomness to this target, it doesn’t have to be pre-scoutable but maybe raise the spawning chance a bit, make the rats a little bigger, or increase the # of rats through the zone. I’m sure you can figure it out as designers. :P

The content is thoroughly enjoyable and I enjoy leading my guild through it but this one target needs a little work.

Thanks!

thevalliant.4563:

Yesterday we failed 5 Bounty events, four of which because of Sotzz coming up! I know the odds of getting 4/5 times Sotzz -or any other target, but only HE is a real issue- selected in the draw are very slim, but that does not change the facts.

Actually, the chance of getting him in one attempt at t3 is 1/3. The chance of getting him 4 times in a row is 1/54, which is not that small.

Anthony, we don’t disagree with the challenging part. Just be sure that all worst case scenarios are calculated.

In my opinion pre-scouting ruins the whole bounty experience. As for Sottz the way he is working now, even a random person could brake his barrel by accident, while an entire guild may be on the lookout for him.

Thank you for listening to us. We truly appreciate it.

thevalliant.4563:

Yesterday we failed 5 Bounty events, four of which because of Sotzz coming up!

Heh, you’re not the only ones. We did three bounties last night, got Sotzz three times and failed every time. We scouted Gendarran Fields with anywhere between 10 and 20 people for 45 minutes and could not find him. Bad luck I suppose =)

We definitely want it to remain challenging, but I also agree that it’s an issue that any person can break the barrel and reset him, as opposed to the other Bounty Hunt targets who can only be activated by guild members without additional mechanic. I think that perhaps even this small change might make him a lot easier to find.

Eivene.9127:

We definitely want it to remain challenging, but I also agree that it’s an issue that any person can break the barrel and reset him, as opposed to the other Bounty Hunt targets who can only be activated by guild members without additional mechanic. I think that perhaps even this small change might make him a lot easier to find.

I think this is the biggest concern for me, too. Sotzz is a particularly annoying bounty; he’s not challenging, just frustrating. There’s a distinction there that must be kept in mind. Random people exploring the zone at the same time as your group, while scouting, can break the barrel, say nothing, and since his reset timer is so short, he will reset somewhere else potentially invalidating the entire search you’ve done up to that point.

My solution is as follows:

• Barrels cannot be broken except by players from a guild which has Sotzz as a target
• Sotzz’ respawn timer get made ~10 minutes instead of the ~1-2 minutes it is now

This would make Sotzz a much more palatable target without invalidating the unique challenge associated with him. It would also give your guild a change to congregate before activating him once found instead of how it is now, where whoever finds him has to activate him immediately and run around in circles until the rest of the guild can get there.

just make the bounty target appear on map with "BIG" star icon
all solved for little guild and big guild
guild wars 2 casual game right?

Thank you for taking the time to respond, Anthony =)

Thanks, Anthony! We really appreciate it!

While you’re at it, you might also look into the fact that random players can also reset Alder Wildman in SSC by killing the karka he’s inside. Fortunately, no one likes that zone and killing karka is terribly unrewarding, so this is much less common an occurrence. Still, it has happened to me at least once.

Sotzzs is pretty much a guaranteed fail if we get him. We only ever found him the first time. Never again.

Since I’ve been largely in charge of our guild bounty organization, I wanted to throw a few things into the conversation about Sotzz. I’ll likely have more feedback on the bounties as a whole tonight after we do our tier 3.

I spent some time in Gendarran this morning, early when it wasn’t very crowded at all (hoping to largely have the barrels to myself). I would say in the course of just shy of 2 hours, I found him 3 times. Not a huge sample, but the average despawn time was 1 minute and 44 seconds. There are some spawn points that are roughly a minute’s run from the nearest waypoint (without speed boost, running through mobs if neccessary to make the shortest path, and thus getting slowed occasionally). By the time you throw in “HEY, I’ve found him. Go to this waypoint.” and everyone sees that and gets through the loading screen, it can cause some huge problems.

I also hit a drought where I ended up doing loops breaking the same barrels 3 times (someone on the other side of the map that I hadn’t been to would randomly set him free/despawn him). People like to break things. It’s fun. Heck, there are areas where you’re encouraged to break things for renown heart. Suspicious barrels look a lot like centaur supplies, and they break in one hit. So I start in the southeast corner of the map. About the same time that I get to vigil keep, some random person sets Sotzz free in the centaur cave in the west. If Sotzz should choose to respawn in the southeast, I would have no way of knowing, and the whole search would be wasted.

I think it’s okay to have some bounties that are hard to find, but I think it needs to be balanced out. Right now he has a lot of potential spawn places, with the possibility of getting unintentionally or intentionally griefed by other players (they may not mean to ruin your bounty, but they can’t do much if they get smash-happy and he just happens to pop out.)

I’ve been thinking of a couple of options, for Sotzz or for other mobs in the future.
1. Keep the same number of spawn points, but revert the despawning. Even when he didn’t despawn, he could still take a very, very long time to find. In fact, it was in some ways harder because there were far less barrels to gauge if you’ve looked in an area or not.
2. Keep a relatively short despawn (I’d still say it needs to increase by at least one more minute), but decrease the number of spawn points, or keep them more on the beaten path and less random all over the zone. To make it a bit less punishing, and less travel time from waypoints if you’re going to add in the crunch of how quickly you have to engage him.
3. Who’s to say we can’t have some bounties where the whole trick is in finding them, and that once you found them you didn’t actually have to fight them? Maybe some targets are just good at hiding. That way, you could start tucking bounties in caves or up on hills or in the far corners of the map. Or you could have spawn points truly covering the zone. Put Sotzz at the end of the Provernic Crypt… it’s going to take a good 5 minutes to get to him. People in general don’t look up or in caves or around corners unless they have to for a PoI or a heart.
4. Alternatively, who’s to say there aren’t some bounties where we know automatically where they’ll be, and we have to “fight through their lair” so to speak?

In the end, I think variety is good. I think some should path. Some should be easy to find, but maybe harder to fight. Some should be hard to find – hiding in barrels and trees and bushes, or crisscrossing entire zones – but easier to fight, if you have to fight them at all.

I’m looking for some clarification on Komali’s mechanic- I just don’t think we can get him reliably out of the field, even though I thought we knew the correct way.

If anybody has any info, please let me know!

Astralporing.1957:

thevalliant.4563:

Yesterday we failed 5 Bounty events, four of which because of Sotzz coming up! I know the odds of getting 4/5 times Sotzz -or any other target, but only HE is a real issue- selected in the draw are very slim, but that does not change the facts.

Actually, the chance of getting him in one attempt at t3 is 1/3. The chance of getting him 4 times in a row is 1/54, which is not that small.

I would have to take a look in my copy of Schaum’s “Probability and Statistics”, but I decided to take your word for it instead^^
Anyway, what you say translates to: “you have a 30% chance to blow a T3”. Is that supposed to make one feel better about it? No, I didn’t think so.

@Anthony: I am sorry I had to use such harsh language, but I thought that would be the only way to bring forth some response from one of you, fabulous people. Dirty ol’ trick, I know, but it still works
Seriously now, my feelings towards both this game and your enlightened minds is known to anyone who has ever read any of my articles on DragonSeason.com. Having gotten that out of the equation, let’s get back to the matter at hand – Sotzz.

I am happy-happy-happy that you promise to take a look at the whole matter.
I am dumbfounded that you managed to locate Sotzz as easily as you claim. I am sincerely unable to believe it, when literally the entire server population has been unable to find him over the course of at least 3 days. Either that, or…

… People decided (for a good reason) to stop being helpful towards members of other guilds, in fear of failing their own missions. I believe this is an even bigger issue here and you definitely should look at it with a higher priority.

Thank you immensely for both your honest reply and the time you (will) take to help resolve this clearly unpleasant situation.

Thats the problem when you call a bunch of friends that do not even fill a GROUP a GUILD. Seriously, this has to stop – there was a guy over at guru who complained that he couldnt do every guild mission with his 2 friends he calls a guild. Man, i cant solo the guild puzzle, what a design failure.