Guild Wars 2

Played the game since the launch and amassed some wealth. I started giving it away to friends/acquaintances/people who answered my challenges.

Here’s the thing tho, today I tried to organize a “find me” contest with stacks of ectos as reward during prime time in LA and managed to get one joke answer in total :/

I always asked for some sort of a challenge before giving away stuff, but if 90 or more gold doesn’t motivate anyone ingame what exactly does?

In short, how the hell do I make people in the most casual MMO ever to get off their bum and do something interesting for a nice reward and fun experience?

Could be they just don’t believe that you will give anything. Way too often people talk big and then vanish. Especially a location like Lions Arch is a magnet for such people.

Yeah, try with a smaller amount. 90 or more gold will scream “scam” to most people and they will ignore or avoid.

I think this could be several things:

First, I think that there are so many trolls on the internet that when many people see a post in chat saying that someone wants to give away something really nice, they assume its a troll. I know I do.

Second, I think that perhaps many people get on the game to do something specific. “Find me” could take a very long time with all the places to hide in a map. Or whatever your challenge is.

Finally, its not like doing your challenge = getting the prize. If 10 people participate but only 1 person gets the prize, people might think there is little chance of them actually getting anything for their effort.

I see challenges like this from time to time. It does add an additional element to the game for those that enjoy…so it’s great that you’re doing it.

Myself, I log into the game with things I want to do. I have a list a mile long and I work different items on my list on different nights, depending on my mood. So, I’m not really sitting back on my bum doing nothing. The mini-challenges that you speak of are not my particular cup of noodles.

That said, I do appreciate your enthusiasm in getting more stuff going in the game. More choice is better.

Djinn.9245:

I think this could be several things:

First, I think that there are so many trolls on the internet that when many people see a post in chat saying that someone wants to give away something really nice, they assume its a troll. I know I do.

Second, I think that perhaps many people get on the game to do something specific. “Find me” could take a very long time with all the places to hide in a map. Or whatever your challenge is.

Finally, its not like doing your challenge = getting the prize. If 10 people participate but only 1 person gets the prize, people might think there is little chance of them actually getting anything for their effort.

This perfectly sums up my reasons.

Some times I might see something like that in map chat and think “Hey, this sounds fun, I’ll join in”. Other times I’m already in the middle of something and for whatever reason can’t drop it to go and join in (maybe people are waiting for me, maybe I have very little time to play that day). And sometimes I’m tired or in a bad mood or have had too many negative experiences with people lately and I’ll assume it’s a scam and ignore it.

None of which means it’s a bad idea. But it might be better to arrange these things with your guild/s and give people some notice ahead of time so if they’re interested they can make sure they’re online and free to participate.

Before megaservers, someone used to do hide and seek based on a riddle in LA. First one to find the player got 1g.

Now 1g isn’t very much anymore at all, but it tempted a lot of ppl back then because it was less suspicious. And it became a regular thing.

Tried to find people in LA before … spent lots of wasted time running around aimlessly. Never found anyone, stopped doing it. The income jsut wasn’t feasible for me to sustain habits like that.

I have seen few scammers like that. I’ll rather give 1-5g to new players in new zones than doing some stuff for free.

It’s also worth noting that you’re not a known entity to most/all of these players. I guess Epic Gamer Radio went kaput, but they used to do a lot of giveaways on SBI before megaservers became a thing. They got quite a few people participating in a number of things (from hide-and-seek to trivia) and I got a fair amount of gold from participating over time.

I’d actually like to see something like that again. If I had the time and people, I’d love to do more. My guild used to do a lot of little parties around holidays. A lot of other guilds did things back in the GW1 days as well, come to think of it.

Excelsior!

All of the points mentioned are right. Sometimes they even blend into each other.

I think the way the community reacts in general is very mixed. I have late shift right now and the past weeks, meaning I play at roughly 1:00 GMT+1. I do not expect many people to respond, but sometimes they do and some conversation develops and suddenly dies within a blink of an eye. No “bye” or “gotta go”. They just vanish. Is this apathetic? I don’t think so.

To come back to your, uh, “problem”: Personally, when I would see something like that in the chat I’d think several things. A few:
1) That dude just loggs off.
2) Giving away such an amount means he could glitch himself out of reach to never actually have to pay.
3) A gigantic map with spots certain classes can’t reach (as easily) kill competition
At that point, I would not mind anymore. . .

I have an older brother. And thus, I know when someone’s so sure to give away such big amounts of nice things, there’s something wrong. When we both were little in the early 90s, I can really see my brother smiling, promising chocolate for lifetime when I do (insert task). Of course I could never actually get that task done…..

Maybe what the game needs is an escrow service ;D

My friend made a Fashion contest in La with rewards of her buying stuff with gems to the winners

The event took about 2 hours and mannnnnny showed up…..

If LA dosnt work go to DIVINITY – REACH
i spend most of my days there and many people love to chat and communicate with one and other we spend hours upon hours just chatting and doing silly stuff , meeting new people and so on ….

in conclusion it is a matter of how you present your self and the way you publish your event , so you failed to convince others it dosnt mean it is their fault……

and try something else instead of hide and seek ….. personally i wouldn’t do it for 90 gold to try and find some one who is prob on some roof or hiding in some bush…. on the entire map…..i understand that many people looking might find you quicker but still not worth my efforts , so maybe try other games that might work better

and i hope i did not offend you in anyway !
it is just my opinion and how i feel
i am glad you are trying to establish events for community
but i guess this one dosnt suit….the current population

have an awesome day sir !

(also i wanted to mention that LA is pretty dead in terms of communicating – and some are huge trolls when communication is established , so try divinity reach there are many regular people who stand for hours just chatting like meeeee you are welcome to join us !)

If someone says he’s giving away gold or free stuff, it’s 95% of the time someone just trolling.
I personally never even bother. I’m sure most people don’t either.

Right, thank you all for answers, input and support! I already have several ideas on how to improve on some things based on your replies.

The thing is, I get that LA is not a homogeneous mix of people who are waiting for me to provide them entertainment. There are your afk’ers, TP traders, “TP traders”, mystic forgers, regular crafters, fractal heroes and many other kinds of people who don’t have time or inclination to participate in such an event. And yes, I count in sceptics in that group as well :P

I’d like to say that I did put some effort in the whole event (maybe even too much effort considering people rarely like to read more text then you can fit in a single twitter message). And I also offered tips on demand to make it easier for people to find me.. but the thing is not a single person even cared…
I think I did my best to prove this was not just a spur of the moment joke but an actual event.. but there is always room for improvement, so we shall see how the next event goes.

Again, thank you all for your replies. Will keep you posted.

Personally its just something I am not interested in. Given that the place is likely hard to get to and Im not a good jumper, to me its just a waste of time and I would just keep doing what I was there for. I do think calling the populace apathetic because they aren’t interested in what you are is kind of unfair though. Maybe you will get luckier next time. Best wishes on your fun.

I generally do not appreciate forcing others or being forced into something I don’t like with the promise of a reward. Whenever I have donated any gold is by answering questions newbies may have, that led to me helping gear them so that they progress faster.
When you say “get off your bum and find me” newbies that need the gold won’t know the map well enough to find you at all and exp people that may find you fast probably won’t need the gold in the first place or just end up being driven by greed.

Sadly I think the changing nature of the MMO community over the years plays a major role too.

Have you heard of Gamers Giving Back, or Pink Day in LA?

You might want to get in touch with them. They organise various in-game events to raise money for charity and many of the events sound exactly like the ones you arrange.

Collaborating with them could be a great way to both get the message out to more people so they know when to show up and to make it clear it’s a legitimate event. Plus it helps raise money for a good cause with no cost to you beyond what you already do to provide prizes.

We used to do hide and seek as a Guild activity. With the Guild leaders running the thing, guild members know it’s not a scam. I like doing hide and seek, but I won’t help unless I have reason to suspect it’s real and I have an understanding of the rules for hiding locations and the rules seem reasonable to allow someone to be found in a decent amount of time.

From experience, hide and seek without some limits on hiding locations is very time consuming. As anyone that has done the karka collection in Lion’s Arch knows, there are a lot of little hidden nooks and crannies in the city. You could spend an entire day and not check all of them. It’s even worse if the person hiding takes to the Troll’s Revenge Jumping Puzzle. One of the rules we had was that the person hiding needed to be able to see at least one NPC from their hiding spot, and to ‘find’ the hiding person, one merely needed to do an emote targeted at them; this meant that the hiding person could be found without having to go into every nook and cranny of the map. Being able to see an NPC means you aren’t wedged into the deepest, darkest and most remote corner of the map.

Another thing we did to cut down on time is to allow questions to be asked of the hiding person in guild chat, to be answered the same way. You might want to limit the questions to yes / no answers. Since anyone can see the answer, most people kept questions simple anyways. ‘Can you see the water?’ or ‘Are you standing on grass?’ narrow down the location a bit and reward people that know the map.

We limited our hide and seek to Cities, Starter Zones, and the city of Ebonhawke to allow new players to play safely.

I will admit to once helping a guildmate win 100g in a hide and seek contest a couple of years ago. All he knew was that the hiding person was somewhere in Queensdale where he could see the sky. He’d checked everywhere he could think of. I found the hiding person in five minutes (most of that running to the spot), by starting at a remote spot very few people visit that he had overlooked.

I like the idea of encouraging activity…and random fun, plus the idea of helping out others even more

In the spirit of the OP I’ll put up 200 gold [READ EDIT BELOW: Now 300 gold] as the prize in an open to all (except members of my own guild who know me and the way I think far too well) scavenger hunt. One clue per day for seven days.

I’ll post one clue each day on this thread, starting on September 30, numbered and each stating the map zone for the day.

The clues will lead to a specific spot on that days map…and state the item/items you need to find/identify. You won’t need to collect anything other than the name, or a number, to solve each clue.

The winner will be the player who gets the highest number of correct answers, in the event of a tie there will be a tie-break clue and in the event of more than one final winner the 300 gold pot will be divided equally between them – with an additional exotic named weapon each (non-precursor) thrown in, my choice based on the players preference for class which should be stated when submitting their answers.

Players taking part can personal message me, through the forum, with their answers at the end of the event. That means all their answers in one go, NOT one answer a day please.

The maps for the hunt will be (in this order):

Diessa Plateau; Brisban Wildlands; Kessex Hills; Snowden Drifts; Queensdale; Wayfarer Foothils; Metricca Province and finally back to Kessex Hills (for the tie-breaker if needed).

This is a genuine offer, anyone who knows me after three years in game knows I don’t troll or scam – ask around if in doubt, or check my forum profile.

Good luck to all those who decide to give it a shot – and I guarantee the clues will lead you to a few places/things you may not have noticed before. Definitely no jumping required!

Breeze

Hello.
now while I agree that there are a lot of players in the community that will see a “free___ reward if you ____” game and instantly say “nope… yer a troll”, I have had a different experience.
I am one of the players that actually plays the “come find me” game. If i have a good exotic weapon or x amount of gold that i want to let loose into the world, what I do is I hit the next zones above the starter zones. why, you may ask? well, for one thing, The starter zones have a split group of people… the group that actually are starting out and those that are either rolling another toon out the gate or doing world bosses/world completion. now, depending on the day, one might see 10-20 different new players actually playing their first toon, but this is not the majority of the populace, it seems, in the starter zones as of late. Helping people and getting people to participate in the starter zones, while quite fulfilling in my experience, also kind of sets them away from getting used to the many systems involved in actual playing.
So, Instead, I will enter a secondary zone, find one of those nice hidey spots that i have found in my travels, and have then announced in map chat about the game and what the reward is. i even so much as go Invisible in game so they cannot friend me and obtain my location somehow. Now, above i read that it’s great for one person to win the reward, but for everyone else it’s meh after the first wins. I do something just a wee bit different. I give it a 1,2,3 approach, with the first player reaching me getting the big prize and the next 2 a smaller prize. this way, players will not be so discouraged for all that running around. and when i do hide, while it seems nigh impossible to find me, most of the time i stage in places that people often overlook when playing, such as the POI in Kessex (you know… that one everyone asks about), or the top of that particular vista in Diessa Plateau (that people fall to their deaths constantly over.)
I guess… perhaps The point here is that a Community is always going to have their anti-social players that don’t believe a single thing they see or read. but that is not the majority. If we all tried just a wee bit harder to make our community an actual community instead of a bunch of peeps playing hack-n-slash for hours, not saying a single thing to each other, perhaps these games we invent won’t be such a bad thing after all.

Freeelancer.2860:

In short, how the hell do I make people in the most casual MMO ever to get off their bum and do something interesting for a nice reward and fun experience?

“Come find me” isn’t fun or interesting though. It’s the second most basic ‘giveaway’ you can do, beyond “whisper me first”.

@OP my suggestion to start a guild, blog, twitter, facebook, phone app, websight, or the like, where you can announce what game/event you will play/host, and when and where you will play/host it. This will get you in touch with like-minded people who also want to host or partake in such events, and gather you a dedicated following that will do these events together, which will sow growth in not only your participants, but the size of the rewards, and the frequency of said events. In other words: build a community. Do that, and I guarentee your events will become a lot bigger, more fun, and more successful.

Also, I would recomend coming up with new games and challenges, maybe even using what the game has already provided you with (the mini-games, jumping puzzels, guild hall pvp arenas, and adventures) as a platform from which you can host your own turnaments.

Freeelancer.2860:

Played the game since the launch and amassed some wealth. I started giving it away to friends/acquaintances/people who answered my challenges.

Here’s the thing tho, today I tried to organize a “find me” contest with stacks of ectos as reward during prime time in LA and managed to get one joke answer in total :/

I always asked for some sort of a challenge before giving away stuff, but if 90 or more gold doesn’t motivate anyone ingame what exactly does?

In short, how the hell do I make people in the most casual MMO ever to get off their bum and do something interesting for a nice reward and fun experience?

Maybe there is not enough players online.
Maybe nobody knows about what you are doing.
Maybe people just don’t log in because the game isn’t worth it.
Maybe people bought so much gold from seller that 90 gold is nothing for them.

Even if i had known that you did such an event, i would not waste my time to participate. Well I just log in once in the week, because this game is not worth my time anymore

Right, first up, thanks for the suggestion @Danikat.8537, I will make sure to check them out.

Second of all, @Bbear.7830, this is an amazing idea! And thank you for doing it If you don’t mind I’d like to add 100 gold of my own to your honey pot, and, again if you don’t mind, I’d like to “steal” this method off ya and use it in my next giveaways.

Unfortunately tho, I think the message will only be lost in this thread. I’m afraid we’ll have to find another way to advertise this “community event”.

Lastly, I did another, “modified” game last night based on the input from the thread, and managed to give out some ~420 ectos to 3 different people, with 7-8 participants in total. Nothing to write home about, but the messages of gratitude and some messages of support from participants/audience did make it worth while. The winner took 250 ectos home and told me that was the last thing he needed to finish the legendary.
Again, thanks for constructive suggestions people!

@Freeelancer…

Glad my scavenger hunt caught your interest, I’ve run this as an annual Guild activity for the past three years and its always been popular.

Takes a while finding suitable interesting spots on the maps and working out clues, but well worth the effort.

Thank you for throwing another 100 gold into the pot…have updated my original post to reflect the increase in prize and recognize your generosity

As a taster (not part of the ‘live’ hunt) here is a clue from 2014’s run – see how you do solving, will give everyone an idea of what to expect:

[Map: Plains of Ashford]

’Seek ancient stone, in image hewn, Lord of Battle overgrown. Badazar falsely named, to the north see the barrier shamed.

Having found, now you seek, treasure hidden from the weak. Count the bowers along the way and name the Mistress who hold sway.’

[Answers required – a number and a name. Incidental reward – Ingame loot you may not have known about/found].

I’ve never been into the find me or scavenger hunt games and they have been around since UO. I find them annoying to be honest.

I did enter a fashion contest once and that was kind of fun, but only once.

@Bbear.7830: This whole idea sounds amazing to me. Definitely more worthy of high quality rewards then my simple “find me’s”
To be perfectly honest I’m glad to have some role in this idea of yours.

As for the matter at hand, I just did another simple “find me”. This time in Blazeridge Steps (I wanted to do it in Queensdale, but the population was really small, so for now I’ll stick with the daily map rotation), and I must say I’m much more satisfied then with my LA runs. I’ve offered 5×5g and got way more traction for the event then I have in my 500 ectos to 4 people in LA one.
To boot, I’d like to think that the chances of catching the kind of people who actually need the gold is higher here then in LA.. and not to mention my usual massive task/massive reward challenges I did with some of my acquaintances.

THE HYNT BEGINS:

Clue 1 [Snowden Drifts Map]

‘Where Jotun Gaze, an Elder stands, mourning Sun on bloodsoaked sands. An image now, all that remains, bear it back to honor names’.

[Identify, collect the name/names – will accept one or both as answer]

Prize fund stands at 500 gold, to be divided between top three players with most correct answers at the end of the game – game ends October 9th to allow entries to be submitted. Next clue October 1st.

Good Luck All

Breeze

UPDATE:

Started an new, dedicated forum thread for the Hynt -

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/The-Wyld-Hynt-500-gold-Scavenger-Hunt/first#post6346287.

Makes it easier for participants to access clues.

Breeze

Yargesh.4965:

Could be they just don’t believe that you will give anything. Way too often people talk big and then vanish. Especially a location like Lions Arch is a magnet for such people.

^This, I tend not to believe people when they go offering X. When you could be looking all around LA for someone who’s mapped out. But I always see the worst in people online.

Personally i always have too much to do to join these activities. Its great to see though.

Hi Guys…

Thanks for the feedback, will go towards making this an annual open world event.

Belial…understand where your coming from, but rest assured this is legit – I have too much respect for my reputation ingame to pull anything twitchy or uncool and Freeelancer is the exactly the same.

Just to clarify – none of the clues involve finding other players, which I totally agree would be an invitation to disaster if they signed out or were DC’d unexpectedly.

Breeze