Guild Wars 2

Hi everybody! Oft-accused White Knight Apologist here to discuss the tension between what players want and what ArenaNet wants for us. This is something that’s bothered me over the last few LW patches and after trying to do Boss Blitz last night, I feel like I’ve got to get this off my chest.

What ArenaNet Wants To Give Us

They haven’t quite said this, but ArenaNet seems to want GW2 “endgame” to be massive open-world content. I’d say they want to give us open-world raids. Difficult fights which require coordination… but in the open world, not in an instance. This has been obvious with megabosses, but other events – Marionette, Scarlet’s Knights/Holos, now Boss Blitz – follow the same pattern.

The problem is that this game had none of these mechanics at launch. They’ve also recognized this and are now trying to “teach” players how to do these events. (I think it was) Josh Foreman talked about this at one point, they are hoping to gradually scale up the difficulty level of these events.

What Players Want

Varies. Many players are chasing loot or chivos. Many players are looking for a challenge. Many players are just looking for a relaxing way to kill a couple hours.

Where I Think the Problem Occurs

I’m not a traditional MMO gamer. In fact, if we don’t count GW1 (because we shouldn’t), GW2 is my first and only MMO. <3 That said, raiding in other MMOs required huge amounts of coordination but worked because everybody had the same goal: kill the boss.

In GW2, players show up to the same events with drastically different goals. Just there for loot? You can AFK in the corner and get the top-end rewards like all the players participating. Want achievements? Hide in the corner where Scarlet’s holo can’t hit you with the gun. Want to kill the boss/complete the event? You’re stuck spending time in mapchat trying to convince people to play the content the “right” way (or perhaps the “coordinated” way) while being ignored/told that they are just “playing the way they want”/told “ArenaNet wouldn’t have done X if they didn’t want me to do Y.”

Inability to Take a Hint

How many of you had people doing Boss Blitz who thought the loot was bugged? Who didn’t realize the goal of Boss Blitz was to kill bosses, not farm mobs?

How many of you had commanders tagged up drawing most of the moths to the blue flame dorito? And 4 or 5 bosses with absolutely nobody?

How many of you, when trying to explain the event in mapchat, were told off by people “playing their way” or “farming” or “getting chivos?”

Pulling in the Same Direction

I understand that game design requires building content for multiple types of gamers, but I am continually astounded that ArenaNet doesn’t build content with this as a strict requirement:

For challenging content which requires coordination, all incentives should point in the same direction: completing the content to achieve the highest reward.

You can still provide reward for failure, but even here you need to be careful. Tequatl’s staged rewards are better than Wurm’s per-head rewards, for example. The Wurm rewards split players who would like to attempt to kill all heads from players who just want to kill one for the “Best Loser” reward.

These events eventually get better. That could be because players “learn” the encounters, but I think it’s because they finally get the achievements and start playing the content as intended. That means that people like myself who are more interested in completing the content than lootz/chivos are stuck headdesking for a couple weeks before we can “play how we want.”

I know this was super long, but PLEASE ArenaNet, if you’re going to give us hard content which requires coordination, don’t also dangle shinies in our peripheral vision.

(And this is an entirely separate topic, but we need better communication/coordination methods as well. Potential idea: Commanders can set a “Players Desired” number and the tag can report that as well as the players in the area. This will greatly ease the process of splitting players between multiple locations like in Marionette and Boss Blitz.)

A bit part of the problem was the advertising. Most people were expecting a farm when this event was announced. Players expectations were found to be otherwise. I like the mechanics I like the way telegraphs are used. I like the special abilities that they have. Sadly because the loot is so so in comparison to what it was before a lot of people are not having fun and leaving the event even people who would normally do the event as designed if it was advertised and our expectations were set correctly.

You just don’t design coordinated encounters for big groups of random people.

The day, ANet accepts this, will be the day they put these abomination of events in raid instances.

I love open world and stuff, but as soon as things get difficult, it will simply not work.
ANet throws these events at the playerbase, because they do not understand how resilient players can be against teamplay, if they do not decide to do so by themselves.

If you join a raid, you go for the kill. You try to kill the bosses to get the rewards, this is motivation enough in most cases.
If you join an event, you go there out of curiosity. Maybe you need some achievements if you even care, but the least thing you care about are the 100 other people around you.
You don’t know them, you don’t mind them, why would someone give a kitten.

Getting a bigger box with the same crappy loot for trying, why would it even be worth it?

I’m more curious if players have any suggestions for how ArenaNet can better communicate how events work to players and whether properly-aligned incentives will work to drive people to the right goal.

I don’t really want this to be a discussion of whether GW2 should have raids. We’ve had that one before.

If we just accept that ArenaNet wants large open world challenging content, what can they do differently to make that content less painful for people who actually want to complete it?

timmyf.1490:

I’m more curious if players have any suggestions for how ArenaNet can better communicate how events work to players and whether properly-aligned incentives will work to drive people to the right goal.

I don’t really want this to be a discussion of whether GW2 should have raids. We’ve had that one before.

If we just accept that ArenaNet wants large open world challenging content, what can they do differently to make that content less painful for people who actually want to complete it?

But the answer is, that you can’t make it less painfull for people who actually want to complete it, as there is no option to filter those players from the others. You get a new random bunch every day, with people with random ideas what to do, if they do anything and are not afk.

The only solution would be to artificially select people for the events, aka known as instances for raids. This is the solution, the only one.

Oh my god I’m agreeing with a white knight!

Wat.

I think that at the start of these events NPCs should be available to tell players basically how to complete the challenge. At least if the events are ‘farmable’. I seem to remember them saying that they have no intentions to put any sort of in-game voice communication system in, so there’s that. New players/players without a guild/players who do not use or do not know how to use mapchat won’t have any idea what is going on. So a very brief explanation for those willing to talk to an npc (marked say with a magical moon over their head) could get a quick rundown. Or a blingy light on their screen saying ‘Hey, wanna help me out? I’ve seen this tragedy before, so talk to me to find out how to defeat it!’ You can choose to not talk to them of course, if you want to figure it out yourself, but it might also help keep the player in the game and not alt-tabbing out to read up the wiki.

Of course, there is a whole issue of ‘is the loot worth it?’ that myself and others keep going back to.

Just some thoughts.

A thought I’ve been having is how to revitalise some of the boss fights in the world. Without going into the brain juicing details, one thought that came to mind was that the events are too simplistic. Simply show up and press 1. Now with the boss timers, it’s check your watch then show up and press 1. The old school timers were nice but also not much more than, show up at any of these times and press 1.

I’ll leave my thoughts on how I think some of these events can be made to be more interesting but one thing that could make dynamic events, well, more dynamic is to put them on a randomiser. A certain intervals (what this interval is isn’t relevant) a herald or scout comes dashing into the main centre nearest that event and announces that X is attacking Y.

For instance, a panicked citizen spawns in LA and announces that Taidha the pirates have appeared at Laughing Gull island and they need adventurers to help defeat them. Of course rather than being cyclic, at the same time you might have a sylvari appear in the grove telling everyone of the Great Jungle Wurm. While, in Divinity’s Reach a farmer may appear and call for help dealing with the Behemoth.

of course this idea basically rules out the daily chests that are run now, the solution for which is a discussion for another day. My reasoning is that the current scheduling system, which is stupid imo, basically takes away the whole dynamism that GW2 was staked on. At the moment, it literally is a daily rotation (oh alright, it’s a TRAIN) of bosses that you run through.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

The only solution would be to artificially select people for the events, aka known as instances for raids. This is the solution, the only one.

Is this not what guilds currently do??
I am in TxS, and we do our best to get all 100+ guildies on the same map to do Teq and Wurm.

Had a whole thread about zergs, AFKers and so on at the end of the first LS and another one on improving average player skills.

So I mostly agree with you. However… I would’ve understood the idea:

• if that event actually awarded something valuable for the whole frustrating experience,
• if it wasn’t designed to ignore crowd control skills and often whole subsets of skills (like reflects),
• if it wasn’t the same DPS race as most events are, combined with crowds of suboptimal clueless (and most likely low-level) players,
• if you as one of the mini-zerg actually mattered (as you mattered in Escape from LA events),
• if it didn’t require from players more money to start it than it gives.

But as it is, it’s a poorly and greedily designed encounter which could’ve worked in a new game (well, it is a new game in China) but causes nothing but frustration in EU/NA GW2. The citizens event in LA was fun, even despite griefing and zerging; this event is not, and I can’t call people who refuse to admit these issues anything other than white knights, sorry.

I would’ve actually preferred if these bosses were simply taken out of this event and put as world bosses in open world – they have nice mechanics for it apart from defiance.

Allaraina.8614:

Oh my god I’m agreeing with a white knight!

Wat.

I’ve always found that moniker troubling as I have complex, conflicting feelings about much of the game. But try to suggest that Game Developers are people with feelings and we should be respectful when attempting to engage? BEWARE WHITE KNIGHT IGNORE OPINION NOW.

To be fair, I often do this myself in other circumstances. It’s very hard sometimes to recognize when you’re disagreeing with somebody because you actually disagree or whether you’re just tossing them in a stereotype bucket so you can insult them more easily.

Anyway.

I haven’t seen the gold/silver loot, so I don’t know if it’s much better. In the past, though, you’re right, the loot for success was rarely improved enough to justify having to coordinate/do the work. That’s definitely a concern.

In-game tutorials would be incredibly helpful especially for the (not-insignificant) number of people who refuse to read mapchat.

I bet Anet will look at the player metrics and realize they really screwed up this event for NA/EU.

Anet needs to read the Wikipedia article about the tragedy of commons. It can be applied here as well.

bri.2359:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

The only solution would be to artificially select people for the events, aka known as instances for raids. This is the solution, the only one.

Is this not what guilds currently do??
I am in TxS, and we do our best to get all 100+ guildies on the same map to do Teq and Wurm.

How about we just make those events encounters you can simply go into an instance with your 100 people, so you do not need an hour to coordinate and artificially find an instance where you can swarm in? Also know as raids.

Why make it the hard way, if there is an easy, accepted, fun, working possibility?

First off, before open world content is added, if we can call them that, then GW2 players need to be conditioned for them.

GW2 players aren’t used to teamwork. They’re used to jumping into the fray and mass abusing their 1 keys until whatever it is falls. On the odd occasion that something requires more than that, some people just give up or the dedicated few organize those willing to beat it.

And once those dedicated and their group beats it, the ones that gave up come running back. And even then many don’t know what to do. It’s like sheep following the herder. They’re still spamming 1, because they never take the time to read or join in on the VoIP.

That’s not a great mindset.

I personally believe that open world content is better instanced. That allows a filter of sorts as to who comes along and who doesn’t. And it may also allow for a higher success rate since there are less people than normal and since they showed up and looked for a group, maybe they’re willing to listen and do what they’re told.

Another thing I’ve said before is randomization. Have various content (bosses) show up at the same time. That allows for people to choose which is more important, and adds a risk factor as well.

And the biggest thing: up loot rewards. Doing something that takes long and requires coordination and planning to get some kitten greens and a blue isn’t worth it. Rewards should always scale with difficulty in MMOs.

Edit: Changed a certain word to content.

Lishtenbird.2814:

I would’ve actually preferred if these bosses were simply taken out of this event and put as world bosses in open world – they have nice mechanics for it apart from defiance.

I’ve always felt like the Multiple Dynamic Events in Zone Lead Players To Naturally Group Together and Eventually Challenge World Boss mechanic (as seen best in Ulgoth prior to timers) was always a good way to do this.

The problem is that you need reasons for people to be in the zones in the first place.

I agree, though, I think the fights are fun until the zerg shows up and you have 60 people wailing away on a near-infinite pool of HP.

Hey guys, I get that lots of people want raids, but I was really hoping to just leave that out of this particular thread. There’s a million other places where you can continue to ask for raids.

timmyf.1490:

Hey guys, I get that lots of people want raids, but I was really hoping to just leave that out of this particular thread. There’s a million other places where you can continue to ask for raids.

The only other solution to raids is that ANet goes back to mindless zerk events. If that is the better solution for you, well, good.

The way it is right now, it just kittens off everyone. A perfect lose/lose situation.

timmyf.1490:

Lishtenbird.2814:

I would’ve actually preferred if these bosses were simply taken out of this event and put as world bosses in open world – they have nice mechanics for it apart from defiance.

I’ve always felt like the Multiple Dynamic Events in Zone Lead Players To Naturally Group Together and Eventually Challenge World Boss mechanic (as seen best in Ulgoth prior to timers) was always a good way to do this.

The problem is that you need reasons for people to be in the zones in the first place.

I agree, though, I think the fights are fun until the zerg shows up and you have 60 people wailing away on a near-infinite pool of HP.

Ulgoth event chain shows that being farmable is a good reason for people to zone in in the first place. If these encounters receive interesting farmable (like the Ulgoth one) or alternatively short and not boring (unlike Taidha barrels) pre-events and are even put on timers along with the other bosses (possibly with 2 world bosses on the same clock), than PvE in GW2 might become (back) a better place.

timmyf.1490:

Allaraina.8614:

Oh my god I’m agreeing with a white knight!

Wat.

I’ve always found that moniker troubling as I have complex, conflicting feelings about much of the game. But try to suggest that Game Developers are people with feelings and we should be respectful when attempting to engage? BEWARE WHITE KNIGHT IGNORE OPINION NOW.

To be fair, I often do this myself in other circumstances. It’s very hard sometimes to recognize when you’re disagreeing with somebody because you actually disagree or whether you’re just tossing them in a stereotype bucket so you can insult them more easily.

Anyway.

I haven’t seen the gold/silver loot, so I don’t know if it’s much better. In the past, though, you’re right, the loot for success was rarely improved enough to justify having to coordinate/do the work. That’s definitely a concern.

In-game tutorials would be incredibly helpful especially for the (not-insignificant) number of people who refuse to read mapchat.

I was being a bit facetious when I probably shouldn’t have been, so I do apologize for that and if what I said was hurtful.

My personal frustration is that the community seems to be very divided. In my experience when someone brings up what they see as an issue some people respond with “no ur wrong!” and then do one of several things; defend the game/game company, tell the person bringing up the issue or others in the thread that they should just go play another game if they don’t like this one, or just generally continue to ignore the major points/concerns brought up.

What happens then (at least what I have observed) is that both sides tend to paint a flat picture of the other and throw darts at it. This isn’t constructive and causes further division. Perhaps as a community we shouldn’t be responding in absolutes but asking more about where people are coming from and why they think the way they do. From there we can begin to brainstorm a solution. I get the feeling that people who bother posting in the forums in the first place are passionate enough about the game to do so. Disagreement is valid, but you’re right, we shouldn’t be making people into caricatures so that we can punch holes in them. And again, I apologize for whatever part I have played in it.

On the matter of raids….
I personally hope that they do not implement those. I used to be a raid leader in another game and in an environment where there is no gear check/dps-hps meter, I wouldn’t want to have to guide them. I do enjoy fractals and am hoping to go back to doing high level fractals. Even if raids DO get implemented at some point, in terms of these boss fights and current open world content I firmly believe there are solutions that can be implemented in the open world.

Azrael.4960:

snip

My only concern is that then people would simply sit in DR or station a friend/guildy there so that someone can make a general announcement “hey guys, drop your dungeon/whatever you are doing cause Teq is up!” Maybe something like that but making the announcement on the UI like back when Scarlet was randomly attacking zones?

No hurt done here, Allaraina, though I will admit that these forums often feel like death-from-a-thousand-cuts and I much prefer Reddit for GW2 discussion. Seems like a much happier, more constructive crowd there.

To try to steer things back on topic… the existing world bosses have some interesting ways to try to pull people to the event, but there is still this problem:

They are loot pinatas you can 1-1-1-1-1-1-1 until they die.

Teq and Three-Headed Wurm are better examples. I haven’t tried these in a couple weeks, but my attempts at doing them without a guild coordinating the fight have all been awful.

I wonder if this might help as a model. You can have two different things:

1) Interesting mechanics, like “X takes no damage unless you Y”
2) Coordinating mechanics, like “split equally” or “kill at same time”

Putting those together, though, seems to push the events out of the reach of most uncoordinated (read: non-guild) groups. Does that seem correct?

I’m trying to think of examples where PUG groups routinely manage coordinating mechanics successfully in mass settings. I’m having a hard time coming up with one, so maybe this is the real issue.

One problem I have with Teq and Jorlag is that I cannot actually hit them with anything other than the 1 key. Maybe I can with icebow 4, but otherwise the ground targeting is a bit weird. That is one thing that could be fixed but I don’t know how or what it would look like after.

Another thing is condition damage. There have been a lot of threads on this (or at least… I seem to remember there being?) but zerk is still the best damage spec* and condition damage seems to matter very little in pve. These bosses usually have consistently maxed stacks of each condition but maybe there is a way for it to matter more? Like the boss flies away for a bit but gets a debuff where it takes double or triple condition damage while it is out of reach so players need to stack it up before it leaves?

(*editing to clarify that zerk appears to be best damage in pve)

So far, it hasn’t seemed like open world massive encounters have taught players when to use conditions versus direct damage.

• Players still bring zerk gear to fight Tequatl
• You’ll still see people asking why they can’t damage Husks at Triple Wurm
• Need I mention Condition Reflect on the Knights?

I didn’t really specify this well enough in my OP, but what I’m wondering is HOW ArenaNet can start to teach these mechanics to players. Yapping about it in /mapchat obviously isn’t working.

Hmmn, yes I agree. But I also feel that condition damage should be somehow buffed in pve. Again I don’t know what that would look like but my dungeon experience (bit different) is that it is far inferior compared to straight up zerk. I do not like that it feels inferior but when I see a full zerk group go through TA F in 10 minutes…. it’s hard to argue. It would be really nice if conditions were on par with straight up damage and (preferably and) new boss encounters were designed in a way that encouraged more diverse builds.

That said…. seeing any group get through TA F in 10 minutes blew my mind @ – @

timmyf.1490:

Teq and Three-Headed Wurm are better examples. I haven’t tried these in a couple weeks, but my attempts at doing them without a guild coordinating the fight have all been awful.

Because people see a massive world boss event, and treat it with the same disgusting regard kittenterer would get. Pug maps may get teq done once in a blue moon, but it still requires a lot of coordination. You dont have 120+ people show up 5-10 minutes before he drops and expect them to know how to do the fight, get into the required groups, dont immediately go afk (unless they’re being an kitten), and listen to the person volunteering to lead the zerg.

Now, and I know this reflects somewhat badly on me as a player, but if I come across a pug map at teq while trying to get into the map established “our” map, I run to a spectacular vantage point near the event area. Why? Because I love watching the world burn, and pugs rage in failure. I dont contribute because it’s already clear the event is a failure, and there’s no reason to waste my time if I get greater enjoyment watching a fail.

The Boss Blitz is an instanced fight, with the exception that you also have players running the Gauntlet taking up spots in the map as well. While that’s a step ahead, it’s still impossible to get your entire guild into the same instance (no “queue as guild” option). Teq and Wurm should all be “sub” zones that guilds can queue into, as well as allowing guilds to form alliances as they did in GW1, and then allow a “queue as alliance” option. Guild leaders would be able to initiate the queuing and this would give everyone in the same zone as the leader a prompt to join the queue, and after X minutes or Y players in the queue, everyone zones at the same time. This would resolve a lot of the issues tied to the megaserver system that’s screwing over a lot of the larger guilds.

Now, to try going back on topic, while I have a com tag on one of my characters, I adamantly refuse to lead a pug map. Mostly for reasons previously covered in this post, and the posts of others. A large majority of players simply cannot comprehend how, while being led for a large scale event, to play the way that gets things done. I dont care if you like to run in circles shooting off rainbows like a kitten unicorn on LSD, but when you come to an event like Teq, I’m sorry, but you kitten well need to listen to whoever’s leading and those who’ve done the fight before. When they say bring Entangle as your elite because it locks down one of the more dangerous enemies in battery phases, you bring Entangle. When they say bring Battle Standard (Warbanner) because it revives a lot of players from the downed state near-instantly, you bring Battle Standard. We arent telling you how to fit out your character aside from the few skills that are absolutely required for the event, such as WoR, Timewarp, Swirling Winds, Feedback, etc, we’re giving you very very good advice, such as bring a ranged weapon, and a melee weapon that can cleave. Additionally, we dont tell you to leave the defense areas if you arent in those teams because you’re blithering fools (even if we think that), but because being in those areas have legitimate consequences to the success or failure of the event.

In short, people dont care to do something unless it’s something they’d be doing anyways. God bless any commander who can get a pug zerg to constantly stack on your tag, it’s nearly impossible even in a coordinated attempt with Teamspeak.

I agree with your thoughtful insight about Anet’s motivations and player’s motivation and the execution. I think that the rewards and achievements need to be very carefully chosen such that it does not antagonize coordination and successful completion of the event (e.g. 30 kegs for wurm before it was fixed) OR frustrate achievement hunters (e.g. marionette warden achievements only granted upon successful completion of the chain, not just your group).

OP – very thoughtful post…thanks.

I see a lot of good ideas and thoughts in previous posts but something that I rarely see discussed in these forums relating to more challenging or substantive (whatever that means) content…is that the nature of content has been changing over the years. No, I am not talking about casuals or hardcores or anything like that. In thinking back to my beginning years in MMOs, raids and, to some extent, dungeons were not content that was conducive to a quick 30-45 minute jaunt. Guilds took weeks (months in the case of my guild) to clear raids. I can clearly recall a dungeon taking 4-6 hours (Maruadon or Sunken Temple for WoW veterans).

Now, our attention span is measured in minutes. The problem with open world events in this changing age is that they must be designed such that you can bring a large group of diverse people to the scene with an expectation of finishing in less than an hour…usually far less than an hour. Even dungeons have evolved so that they can be done easily over a lunch break or…heck, even a coffee break for some folks.

I regret that I do not have any good ideas for solving this dilemma. The issue certain transcends this particular game…I see the same arguments and the same issues in other game forums.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

timmyf.1490:

I’m more curious if players have any suggestions for how ArenaNet can better communicate how events work to players and whether properly-aligned incentives will work to drive people to the right goal.

I don’t really want this to be a discussion of whether GW2 should have raids. We’ve had that one before.

If we just accept that ArenaNet wants large open world challenging content, what can they do differently to make that content less painful for people who actually want to complete it?

But the answer is, that you can’t make it less painfull for people who actually want to complete it, as there is no option to filter those players from the others. You get a new random bunch every day, with people with random ideas what to do, if they do anything and are not afk.

The only solution would be to artificially select people for the events, aka known as instances for raids. This is the solution, the only one.

i disagree, i think you can filter players, there are a couple keys here

but as timmy said, they didnt design the game for this, in fact they designed the game around 5 man, then extended that to 20-30 players, when you get more than this, things begin to go wonky.

Essentially they need to design better ways for communication, that dont require a large team.
They also need to design systems that can keep players together, better
and they need to message the content better.

For example lets say they name these type of open world large scale events something like. “World Battles” then they make it clear world battles are content for organized large scale play in the open world. Now, just the name on top of the fight lets people know what to expect. People will begin to filter themselves out of this content, and approach it with a certain frame of mind.

Then better tools for communication, the commander tag cdi touched on this, but in order to develop these open world contents, YOU MUST add these tools. anet has decreased the predictability of who you play with. They have to give tools so that commanders can effectively lead even people who dont know everything about the fight.
So what type of tools are needed?
This is going to be complex, oh well, you make complex fights, in open world, you need complex tools

• You need squads to be larger, you have shifted your large scale paradigm from 30players to 150 players, how many people can be in a squad has to reflect this.
• You need commanders to be able to appoint sub squad commanders
• you need commanders to be able to create dynamic event like information, essentially, to create hot zones(circles) on the map, a short descriptive goal, and assign that to different sub commander groups.
• you need to have ways of assuring that your groups will stay together through various maps.

so short version

• better messaging of different styles of content, large scale organized events, on which your level of success determines your reward need its only classification, so people who dont like them can avoid them.
• better organizational structures aimed at allowing people who know what to do to better communicate to people who dont know what to do, faster, simpler, and without them having to join TS
• means for keeping these groups together once formed even on megaserver.

timmyf.1490:

Hi everybody! Oft-accused White Knight Apologist here to discuss the tension between what players want and what ArenaNet wants for us. This is something that’s bothered me over the last few LW patches and after trying to do Boss Blitz last night, I feel like I’ve got to get this off my chest.

What ArenaNet Wants To Give Us

They haven’t quite said this, but ArenaNet seems to want GW2 “endgame” to be massive open-world content. I’d say they want to give us open-world raids. Difficult fights which require coordination… but in the open world, not in an instance. This has been obvious with megabosses, but other events – Marionette, Scarlet’s Knights/Holos, now Boss Blitz – follow the same pattern.

The problem is that this game had none of these mechanics at launch. They’ve also recognized this and are now trying to “teach” players how to do these events. (I think it was) Josh Foreman talked about this at one point, they are hoping to gradually scale up the difficulty level of these events.

What Players Want

Varies. Many players are chasing loot or chivos. Many players are looking for a challenge. Many players are just looking for a relaxing way to kill a couple hours.

Where I Think the Problem Occurs

I’m not a traditional MMO gamer. In fact, if we don’t count GW1 (because we shouldn’t), GW2 is my first and only MMO. <3 That said, raiding in other MMOs required huge amounts of coordination but worked because everybody had the same goal: kill the boss.

In GW2, players show up to the same events with drastically different goals. Just there for loot? You can AFK in the corner and get the top-end rewards like all the players participating. Want achievements? Hide in the corner where Scarlet’s holo can’t hit you with the gun. Want to kill the boss/complete the event? You’re stuck spending time in mapchat trying to convince people to play the content the “right” way (or perhaps the “coordinated” way) while being ignored/told that they are just “playing the way they want”/told “ArenaNet wouldn’t have done X if they didn’t want me to do Y.”

Inability to Take a Hint

How many of you had people doing Boss Blitz who thought the loot was bugged? Who didn’t realize the goal of Boss Blitz was to kill bosses, not farm mobs?

How many of you had commanders tagged up drawing most of the moths to the blue flame dorito? And 4 or 5 bosses with absolutely nobody?

How many of you, when trying to explain the event in mapchat, were told off by people “playing their way” or “farming” or “getting chivos?”

Pulling in the Same Direction

I understand that game design requires building content for multiple types of gamers, but I am continually astounded that ArenaNet doesn’t build content with this as a strict requirement:

For challenging content which requires coordination, all incentives should point in the same direction: completing the content to achieve the highest reward.

You can still provide reward for failure, but even here you need to be careful. Tequatl’s staged rewards are better than Wurm’s per-head rewards, for example. The Wurm rewards split players who would like to attempt to kill all heads from players who just want to kill one for the “Best Loser” reward.

These events eventually get better. That could be because players “learn” the encounters, but I think it’s because they finally get the achievements and start playing the content as intended. That means that people like myself who are more interested in completing the content than lootz/chivos are stuck headdesking for a couple weeks before we can “play how we want.”

I know this was super long, but PLEASE ArenaNet, if you’re going to give us hard content which requires coordination, don’t also dangle shinies in our peripheral vision.

(And this is an entirely separate topic, but we need better communication/coordination methods as well. Potential idea: Commanders can set a “Players Desired” number and the tag can report that as well as the players in the area. This will greatly ease the process of splitting players between multiple locations like in Marionette and Boss Blitz.)

While i gave suggestions for better organisation and messaging for the large scale events. I actually think IT IS A COMPLETE MISTAKE for this to be the major endgame content. It only appeals to a certain subset of players, they need to make more complex, interesting content for players who prefer lower man things as well. They also need to have open world things that are designed for solo/duo/trio players, and other group sizes.

tequatl was a great organizational fight, it was boring as tears when executed well, and pretty stupid. stand in the lag center of the universe, and take dmg while people endlessly res you until you cant be ressed anymore. I appreciate what it gives, but i wouldnt want that to be the main focus of elder game play

phys.7689:

While i gave suggestions for better organisation and messaging for the large scale events. I actually think IT IS A COMPLETE MISTAKE for this to be the major endgame content. It only appeals to a certain subset of players, they need to make more complex, interesting content for players who prefer lower man things as well. They also need to have open world things that are designed for solo/duo/trio players, and other group sizes.

tequatl was a great organizational fight, it was boring as tears when executed well, and pretty stupid. stand in the lag center of the universe, and take dmg while people endlessly res you until you cant be ressed anymore. I appreciate what it gives, but i wouldnt want that to be the main focus of elder game play

I am fine with festivals having items like this. However I sure hope that the living world in the future will contain more small group content(dungeons/fractals) more events to explore and more personal story(or Personal story like) content.

A few events like this is ok to give those raiders something. But too much more of this will drive away players that can’t get into really large groups.

Elothar.4382:

OP – very thoughtful post…thanks.

I see a lot of good ideas and thoughts in previous posts but something that I rarely see discussed in these forums relating to more challenging or substantive (whatever that means) content…is that the nature of content has been changing over the years. No, I am not talking about casuals or hardcores or anything like that. In thinking back to my beginning years in MMOs, raids and, to some extent, dungeons were not content that was conducive to a quick 30-45 minute jaunt. Guilds took weeks (months in the case of my guild) to clear raids. I can clearly recall a dungeon taking 4-6 hours (Maruadon or Sunken Temple for WoW veterans).

Now, our attention span is measured in minutes. The problem with open world events in this changing age is that they must be designed such that you can bring a large group of diverse people to the scene with an expectation of finishing in less than an hour…usually far less than an hour. Even dungeons have evolved so that they can be done easily over a lunch break or…heck, even a coffee break for some folks.

I regret that I do not have any good ideas for solving this dilemma. The issue certain transcends this particular game…I see the same arguments and the same issues in other game forums.

That’s very perceptive of you – thank you!