Guild Wars 2

In the original Guild Wars, Dragon Arena had proper matchmaking, great rewards, and was just fun. It wasn’t perfect, but I still thoroughly enjoyed it. The Guild Wars 2 equivalent however is completely unbearable to me, which is sad considering it’s potential.

Why I don’t like it:
• Most games seem to snowball horribly.
• Once a team gets ahead and zergs with all the power ups you become mostly helpless. Power ups can be picked up by players who already have them so good luck getting them reliably on the losing team (and have fun continuing to lose).
• The default auto-attack is so completely worthless you can’t even hit players directly in front of you reliably. If they start killing you before you can pick it up the better auto, you’re as good as dead.
• There’s no movement penalty for attacking and the projectile speed is high so it’s often extremely difficult, if not impossible to Line of Sight or escape from someone who is auto-attacking you to death on more health if you don’t have all the skills.
• No rewards. Literally no rewards. Unless you win 10 games. Then you get a mediocre reward. It feels like a complete waste of time. The Winter Wonderland JP was fun and amazingly rewarding where as this game mode gives you nothing.
• No matchmaking/queue. Teams don’t have to be perfectly balanced in terms of numbers and there’s no reason to not just leave if losing (no dishonor, etc.). Players can eventually get auto-balanced onto the enemy team, but this means that a player who had a guaranteed win now gets a guaranteed loss. Players entering the game mode also have to put up with being placed on the losing team halfway through a game for a guaranteed loss. There is no reward for losing and being steamrolled is not remotely fun, so this just wastes players time rather than balancing the teams.
• It’s buggy. Players who are 5 feet in front of me on flat ground are often “obstructed” while they have no problem killing me.

All that being said, the skills are cool, I like the arena design, and there is a lot of potential fun to be had. It’s just frustrating when some of the problems listed above get in the way. Dragon Ball just needs some loooooooooong overdue improvements and polish. It’s just sad ArenaNet seems to ignore improving recurring content. Wintersday and Halloween saw few major changes as far as I could tell. Some things were added, but stuff that already existed was left pretty much the same, despite having potential to improve.

+1, I wholeheartedly agree.

Granted, GW2 Dragonball is fun if you are a) winning or b) just have a fun team (even if you lose), but the vast majority (of my experience) is neither of those. I have a lot of stories about negative experiences, but I think you cover all the bases OP.

I was excited when Dragonball came back. I had wanted to see it make a reappearance in GW2. Sadly, I can’t even stand to play it, as it currently stands.

I keep reliving the disappointment of Lunar New Year. It’s a gambling gold sink and shoddy PvP.

…woo.

Is there even a meta-achievement this year? Didn’t see one, so I have 0% reason to go into Dribble Ball.

There are individual Dragon Ball achievements, but no, no meta that I’d noted. And the achievements just give envelopes. I don’t even think any of them have any type of title. So it’s just for AP hunting (and enjoying being a sucker for punishment), I suppose.

I really miss GW1’s Canthan New Year. The quest running. The food hunting for the event. The celestial minis. The shinies for completing a full round of the chefs. Is it just me?

Joining games in progress can go either way. I’ve joined games on the side of the obvious winners. I guess if a game starts 4 vs 4 and most of one team leave, the empty spaces on either team can be filled by new players after the rebalance.

I tried to play this thing for real, but after experiencing how disastrously bad this is implemented, I just play two games a day, for the achievement. I don’t attack people other than to interrupt them for another achievement, or to attract their attention if no one is attacking me. Because I need to be attacked so I can farm health for yet another achievement. Well, I only farm health now because I’ve got my 20 interrupts.

I’m close to my next multiple of 5,000 AP, so I’m going after achievements a little more aggressively right now. And frankly, farming health globs while the only other player still left in the game tries to kill me for the win for a solid 18 minutes straight is somehow quite entertaining.

its a kitten game for a kitten event with kitten rewards and a kitten holiday. anet has done nothing to make this worth bothering

I was very disappointed to realize that this event is almost entirely PvP based. I hate PvP and so there is basically almost nothing for me to do. The only good thing about this event as with any event is that it makes the irritating dailies tolerable because there are twice as many PvE dailies. Why is this game so against rewarding its players?

I did the daily Dragon Ball PvP last year because it was new. This year I did it for 2 days, then asked myself, why am I doing this? Autobalance is broken, the rewards suck, wins are a time consuming grind that give you more low value, RNG rewards.

Except for the part where I can advance my magic find for little cost, this whole festival is PATHETIC.

Comparison to the Guild Wars 1 Lunar Festival for those who didn’t play that game:
Canthan New Year, aka The Lunar Festival

Wow. An event that is entirely optional and you don’t like it and don’t want to play it so you trying to tell people (“I Hate Dragon Ball (and you can too)”) that they too can jump on the hate bandwagon? Really??? If someone doesn’t like that just don’t play it, it’s the same exact as last year so why would it be different this year? Yearly holiday events hardly ever change in any MMO so again why would it be different this year or this MMO?

Actually I really like Dragonball, probably because I’m good at it, but by the same token, I have to agree that it’s implementation is flawed. It was flawed last year too. It would be a much better event if it had some of the same safeguards as normal PvP, like getting a win if you volunteer to switch, when people leave the losing team.

With a little work, this could be a good little game. As it is now, I play it because I have fun with, get my five wins for the achievement and I’m out.

In my opinion the worst part is if you volunteer to swap to the losing team you do not get a win unless you somehow manage to win with the team you changed too. In normal pvp if you volunteer to swap to the losing team, no matter what happens you still win.

That doesn’t mean we can’t express that we would like to see it made better, Silly. That we would like to see them make it into something more than what it presently is.

My Dragon Ball story in its entirety:

Went in, ran 50 feet, died.
Rezzed, ran towards an interesting thing, died before I reached it.
Quit.

Some things are just not my bag.

Nothing but trash. No meta achievement for this event … players are farming wins. lots of players enter the games and if they are on the losing team they just bail out and find another game because there is no penalty for leaving .. just this make Dragon Ball a trash game .. it was the same for the snowball game in wintersday .. no one is playing seriously.

I agree. I hate dragon ball, and I rarely say that I truly hate something in game. Admittedly this may be because I forced myself to get my 50 wins in 5 days for the 50AP, but I honestly don’t believe I have had a time when I have dreaded logging in and playing as much as I did in those 5 days of farming dragon ball. It was such a huge relief when I finally got that 50th win and new I wouldn’t have to do that for another year.
Although I have said this, I think the concept of the game is quite good and honestly I just think it isn’t really my thing, not that it is just plain bad. The most annoying thing for me was if I died I lost all of my skills and had to run around avoiding all fights (very hard in dragon ball) until I got my skills back or I would just get demolished. I agree with the OP that an improvement should be made so that matches are not decided after the first fights due to the losers of those fights losing all their skills. Really though it isn’t so bad and I think my dislike for it comes from me forcing myself to farm it when I would have rather done literally anything else in game other than that.

PyrateSilly.4710:

Wow. An event that is entirely optional and you don’t like it and don’t want to play it so you trying to tell people (“I Hate Dragon Ball (and you can too)”) that they too can jump on the hate bandwagon? Really??? If someone doesn’t like that just don’t play it, it’s the same exact as last year so why would it be different this year? Yearly holiday events hardly ever change in any MMO so again why would it be different this year or this MMO?

its called continual improvement. if an event doesnt work or has poor player feedback then why shouldnt it be fixed? yes, you can ignore the event and not do it. but thats not why Anet has put the event in. they dont add content for players to ignore them and its expected that if something isnt fun then it gets a second look at how it can be improved. its not out of line to expect this.

personally, i love/hate dragonball. i dont do pvp in gw2 but the dragonball mechanics are on the right track and with a few tweaks could be really good. but, the frustration with the broken mechanics, lack of volunteer win and the time it takes to accumulate even 10 wins keeps me from playing.

suggestions:
-lower the time limit/score (even if this is the only fix, i could deal with everything else)
-bring in volunteer rewards and you lower the frustration of getting 10 wins
-minor tweaks to gameplay mechanics will speed up the progression

Just bring back GW1 New Year. that was a very fun celebration. plus we got masks Ooooo
I want more masks like GW 1 had for winters-day and Mad King too please

Dragonball probably one of the WORST things Anet has thrown at us yet.
-buggy
-no penalty for leaving early
-wins are completely random
-skills often don’t work properly… oh I aready said buggy, but is’s SOOO buggy it’s worth 2 mentions.

-Would not play again

Don’t forget that terrible jump pad that you use when the match start/respawns. That jump pad is annoying.
I agree the skills are overpowering especially that #1 power up skill, when 4 people a beaming you from across the room. Match rewards are non existent.
That interrupt ap needs to go.

Tspatula.9086:

-no penalty for leaving early

That’s the only issue, and also the reason why hotjoin isn’t fun, and why snowball wasn’t fun neither…

It’s hard to put a tactic and to set up serious play when you have players acting like " i died, i’m leaving this game " These modes have a lot of potential and are themselves quite fun, but players not trying or giving up too quickly are ruining the fun of other players.

Since you can’t fix players behaviour generally( even if you put some dishonor, people will still leave), games like lunatic inquisition would be better

:o I did it! I hate dragonball too!!!!

I kinda like it. Had the biggest “LOL” I’ve had in game in a while playing it yesterday. Got stuck in match that was 1v2 from the start. Never got new players in, just the 1v2. The fun part for me was that I was the 1 and I won!

the only achievement i have left is to collect health nodes. i don’t care if i win or lose so that helps!

that said, back when i was playing for more reasons than one i did claim it was “the least fun i have ever had playing guild wars 2”.

Dragon Ball is pretty bad. Pretty pretty bad. Everything the OP said and more. On the other hand the snow PvP was so much better. Better skills, we can actually dodge stuff, objectives, three classes.

Its funny how spvp doesn’t have a solo que, yet all these mini game events do.

Feelsbadman.

I’m not big on pvp, but I’ve had a ton of fun with Dragonball. Everyone has the same skills, so it’s easy to learn/memorize compared to regular pvp. There’s alot of strategy in the ways to use the skills, plus the shortcuts & switchbacks to take around the arena if you’re being pursued. Plus I love Cantha, so it’s nice to have some of that flavor.

My main complaint is the stupid jump pad in the spawn point. There isn’t alot of margin for error, so half the time, if you don’t hit it just right, you fail to get out. Would it kill them to give that pad 10% more power so you could go out and have fun instead of struggling to get out of spawn? Then there are also the collision detection issues. I’ve had ppl hit me through walls with the upgraded #1 skill, then get the ‘obstructed’ message when shooting someone almost point-blank range with the default #1. I’d also echo others in that the rewards are a little sparse. You should get a little something for every win.

Gilburt.9146:

I like the arena design

That surprised me. There’s only one arena (am I mistaken about that?) and it looks like some kind of sewer reminiscent of earlier FPS games. It wouldn’t be bad amidst an assortment of arenas, but being the only one it quickly gets onerous getting killed again and again… (because of the other issues you mentioned)… in a sewer. A small sewer.

Gilburt.9146:

• Most games seem to snowball horribly.
• Once a team gets ahead and zergs with all the power ups you become mostly helpless. Power ups can be picked up by players who already have them so good luck getting them reliably on the losing team (and have fun continuing to lose).
• The default auto-attack is so completely worthless you can’t even hit players directly in front of you reliably. If they start killing you before you can pick it up the better auto, you’re as good as dead.
• There’s no movement penalty for attacking and the projectile speed is high so it’s often extremely difficult, if not impossible to Line of Sight or escape from someone who is auto-attacking you to death on more health if you don’t have all the skills.
• No matchmaking/queue. Teams don’t have to be perfectly balanced in terms of numbers and there’s no reason to not just leave if losing (no dishonor, etc.). Players can eventually get auto-balanced onto the enemy team, but this means that a player who had a guaranteed win now gets a guaranteed loss. Players entering the game mode also have to put up with being placed on the losing team halfway through a game for a guaranteed loss. There is no reward for losing and being steamrolled is not remotely fun, so this just wastes players time rather than balancing the teams.

Snowballing is more of a symptom of other qualities than anything in the game itself. The hotjoin system, lack of participation reward, and lack of punishment for quitting is more to blame than anything. Being behind leads to people quitting which leads to low team member counts which leads to slow and certain losses. If people had reason to stay (and play, because two or three leeches standing around doesn’t stop snowballing either), this wouldn’t happen as much. There are plenty of opportunities for losing teams to ball up and wipe out stray enemies, even on no skills. That it doesn’t is often due to player ineptitude and poor team play and what’s been previously mentioned.

• No rewards. Literally no rewards. Unless you win 10 games. Then you get a mediocre reward. It feels like a complete waste of time. The Winter Wonderland JP was fun and amazingly rewarding where as this game mode gives you nothing.

Yeah, it’s pretty bad. I haven’t touched anything in this game for years except the activity formats, and none of them are good investments of time for the sake of making money in the rest of the game. They by and large don’t offer unique rewards either, which isn’t entirely true for Dragon Ball except that you have to pay for those rewards and it’s mostly just a license to buy more of something that other people could get anyways. I’m not a big proponent of leecher tourist participation awards, but would like to see the coffer improved and broken up so that winners get something every round and then something else with their repeat achievement.

I’d also like to see a special prize like what was offered during the CNY in GW through RBR. A scoring system of wins^3/games^2 would strike a good balance between players of high win rates and players of high win counts, and something unique could be rewarded to the players that come away with the top 100-1000 scores. It’s not possible in the current environment where people can ditch games and duck losses though.

• It’s buggy. Players who are 5 feet in front of me on flat ground are often “obstructed” while they have no problem killing me.

Dragon Bombs and better camera work will fix most of that for anyone. It’s true though that projectile trajectory calculation in this game is a bit off.

All that being said, the skills are cool, I like the arena design, and there is a lot of potential fun to be had. It’s just frustrating when some of the problems listed above get in the way. Dragon Ball just needs some loooooooooong overdue improvements and polish. It’s just sad ArenaNet seems to ignore improving recurring content. Wintersday and Halloween saw few major changes as far as I could tell. Some things were added, but stuff that already existed was left pretty much the same, despite having potential to improve.

The game is fun for me. The better you are, the better it gets. The more rewarding you expect it to be, the worse it gets. All I can say is that you shouldn’t hope for any major changes to come to this game format or any others, ever. Knocking the Dragon’s Gaze achievement down from 100 to 20 is little more than changing a few integers, and that’s all ANet could ever care to do when it comes to maintaining their activities.

This company has a fixation on really bad pvp games as a feature of its celebrations and other events. I hate PvP anyway, but junk like dragon ball, where you get NOTHING as you flail away at it, particularly suck. Also, love the obvious hacks and other bs going on that is clearly not addressed, since so many of the complaints from last year are still on topic :/

Spook.5847:

This company has a fixation on really bad pvp games as a feature of its celebrations and other events. I hate PvP anyway, but junk like dragon ball, where you get NOTHING as you flail away at it, particularly suck.

I disagree with this notion entirely. ANet has a great history with making holiday PvP formats. Their record for maintaining or building upon them has been lackluster though, and only lately have many of the formats been that awful or dull.

Here’s a nice tier list for all of the PvP minigames that ANet has produced so far:

God Tier:
Pre-2012 Costume Brawl (GW)

Ascended Tier:
Dwayna Vs. Grenth tournaments
Aspect Arena

High Tier:
Reaper’s Rumble
Sanctum Sprint
Rollerbeetle Racing
Dragon Arena
Lob 2.0 Keg Brawl

Mid Tier:
Dwayna Vs. Grenth
Post-2012 Costume Brawl (GW)
Lob 1.0 Keg Brawl
Dragon Ball
Snowball Mayhem

Low Tier:
Southsun Survival
Lob 3.0 Keg Brawl (current)
Great Snowball Fight
Dragon Nest

Dhuumed Tier:
Crab Toss

Please Retire From Development Immediately Tier:
Lunatic Inquisition
Basket Brawl

I don’t hate Dragonball, but I wish it were implemented better. I really like the layout of the map. It’s small enough to find fights and keep on your toes, but still has some good shortcuts and fakeouts so you can elude people if you’re good at the map travel. I’m not a PvPer, but I really like this game.

The problem is just what the OP said – when it snowballs, it gets real painful real quick. Whatever the reasons are for it snowballing (keeping skills, no penalty for leaving) no one denies that it does and there is no catch up mechanism.

It does also feel random because I can be top scorer by a wide margin in one game, and not be able to do anything the next. I take a look at the scoreboards and notice this for other players as well. Sure, some names are always at the top and you can tell who the really good players are, but mostly it feels random and you just hope you get lucky. That’s not necessarily bad, but adds a bit to the frustration. I don’t even bother with the 5 win daily – I’m just there for the participation, and if I’m still having fun after two games, I stick around til I’m not.

This game is so great…

I just stretched another game out to last what must’ve felt like forever to my opponents.

As usual, people start leaving at a disadvantageous score. After some shuffling, the scores are at 120-20 and we’re in a 2 vs 1 setup, I’m the one, and I’m the one with the 20 points. We started out as a proper 4 vs 4 game but all the involuntary team switchers left immediately.

I was just farming health so 2 vs 1, that’s great for me. I don’t hurt them, they can’t grab “my” health orbs, and I didn’t have team members hurting them and ruining that for me. I never left the respawn point voluntarily. I don’t want to get out there before the orbs I took during my last “suicide run” respawned. It took them 19 additional minutes to get their 500. To their credit, they stuck with it.

Everyone who joined the game was placed on my team because of the 2 vs 1 situation. They all left immediately, so the teams had no chance to grow. One guy came and left 3 times.

One of my best games ever, I boosted my Dragon’s Heart achievement with 13%.

Anet really should have made the projectile more obvious, it really really bad to get obstructed so much due to the graphic of the attack.

the problem is its buggy as heck and the rest of the festival is boring, so all we have is Dragonball.

- punished for switching teams basically (since now you are on the losing team and get nothing)
- no punishment for leaving
- projectiles buggy so much that an opponent can be right in front of you, and still be “obstructed”
- have to stand directly on the pads to get out of the holes, then move while in air or you are never getting out
- camera collision when using the pads at the sides with the walls
- having to set the auto attack every time you join a game
- im sure there are more that I missed

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

I really miss GW1’s Canthan New Year. The quest running. The food hunting for the event. The celestial minis. The shinies for completing a full round of the chefs. Is it just me?

That’s pretty much where I’m spending my Canthan New Year. The event in GW2 just seems so uninteresting so far.