Guild Wars 2

I came in to the forums today expecting to see a tun of happy posts about this event.. and am amazed to see only crying..

It was long and a bit repetitive with the killing reinforcements for sure. But over all I had fun it was something my guild got together for and all tried to get on the same overflow. We had a lot of fun laughing at each other and experiencing something new in the game.

And in the end the chest had some amazing loot to tie it all together. One of my guildies even got the precursor for the hammer. People only seem to care about what they got and can’t be happy for others and that is a shame.

Grats to those who got the lucky precursors. I did not get one but I was happy with just getting the earring that I do believe everybody got? It exceed my expectations and I am glad Anet took care in making something that was so long and for some full of deaths and made it worth wile.

If you did not make it that sucks you had a tun of notice for it. And to those who want to argue it is just a game and they shouldn’t have to plan around it then stop crying for not getting something in said game.

I will agree that 1 time events should be on slightly dif times if the server is European vs American but other then that this event was not sprung on anybody…

Thanks for the good time!

Warm Ember.2798:

and
>Consider scrapping the one time events in favor of instanced or re-playable events so that people from all time zones can attend

An instanced event is a fantastic idea. Almost like an additional personal story step, but you could be loaded into it with other players currently in it. You could show up at the point of interest and enter it, joining into an instance that can be scaled up or down depending on how many people have joined. If you get booted, you’d have to join in another instanced group but at least it would be recognizing that you hadn’t successfully completed it or gotten your rewards. For something that’s supposed to be completed only once, that would be a lot kinder to everyone’s schedules, and computers.

One-time events are awesome and everything, and I love to be a part of them as they are very memorable. But myself, and like most others, are just unable to make some of these events. I feel really cheated that people who were available to be on during the defeat of the boss got extremely valuable rewards, while other players whom are dedicated to GW2 who weren’t able to make it, receive absolutely nothing.

Another thing is that it was very misleading for myself. I participated in the first two one-time events, and no major rewards showed up, it was just something epic to be a part of and enjoy. I would have made the event if I could have, but just because I had to work on that day, or even on the hours of that one event, I miss out of great rewards, or perhaps even precursors, that would save myself many hours of grinding. When I got home, my friend told me people were getting numerous exotics and precursors and other great items from the concluding event, I hoped on mere minutes after the event ended (abiout 5 minutes after 3pm PST) and I stayed in the lost shores area hoping for something else to take place so I could get my share of great rewards. Only to be disappointed that the one event was a one-time deal, and was never going to happen again.

I was really hoping it would going to repeat itself like many other world bosses do, IE: The shatterer,. where the event happens again about 3 hours afterwards and the players that missed the first event get their second chance.

On sunday? During football (in usa)?
I don’t recall seeing any letters saying at noon PST only!
(I was at work on fri & sat @ noon pst)
I don’t recall letters saying it was a once-only event!
(When it was announced as a “One Time” event, I thought is was going to be like GW1’s “Fairwell to Gaile” event, which repeated all day.)
I thought this was Guild Wars 2! (You know, better than Guild Wars 1?)

I might note that during half-time, I checked to see if the event was live, I figured there’d be another big download and was trying to save time. I logged in only to hear people complaining that they couldn’t open the chest, or was there a chest, or where was the chest? I also heard complaints about folks getting disconnected and losing out on the rewards.
All of which led me to believe it was at the very least bugged, and would be fixed later, as was everything else during this weekend event.

In my personal opinion, rather than doing another one of these events, how about fixing GW2, like:
Getting armor names between Karma Vendors, the PvP Locker, Personal Story Rewards, Drops, and the Trading Post to match the same items? (Duelist, Marksman, and Leather armors come to mind, amongst others.)
Or… Removing WvW maps from world map completion. Guild Wars 1 didn’t require anything but PvE for map completion. (Give folks who have completed the WvW maps their own special title and leave us PvE’ers out of it.)

As to the new content, not a fan of dungeons, but it was different. The new map is one big jumping puzzle as far as I’m concerned. (I hate jumping puzzles, and will probably never go back there.)

I absolutely LOVED this stage. My guild kinda did the opposite, we got on as many different overflows as possible it seemed, but it was great comparing notes and the ones that were further in it kept encouraging the others. I loved the exotic loot even though I didn’t really get anything I could use, but the event itself was arguably the best three hours I’ve spent on this game. I even enjoyed the beginning part where my entire overflow kept dying lol. I haven’t gotten around to doing Arah yet, but this event is a perfect description of how epic bosses, aka dragons, should be fought. If only Arah could be a story instance with a zerg of NPCs lead by Destiny’s Edge, but I’m getting off topic. Great job ANet you deserve a break to spend Thanksgiving with your families and I look forward to what you come up with for Wintersday.

Most of us had other things to do today besides wait for an event to start once. I had things I could not get out of doing to be in this. This event needs to repeat so we all get a chance. The events need to be like they were in GW1 and repeat every hour so we all get a chance at doing them.

Hey ArenaNet,
First off, I gotta say thanks for having all these sweet events. The time and effort put into GW2 is amazing. I love ArenaNet because y’all put out an amazing game and really show you care about what you’re doing. That said, I was wondering if it was all possible to have these events (like Lost Shores) be available for more than a few days? As a student, I’m having an incredibly hard time getting online during these events. (It’s driving me nuts that I have to write a paper during the final phase of Lost Shores.) Maybe a whole week or two? I’m not saying adding more content, just making the phases of the events last longer. Also, maybe not having phases dependent on each other would be nice. I loved that I had a ton of time to do everything in GW because everything was quest-based and open for a substantial amount of time. Also, the Ancient Karka event took a really long time in a really grindy sort of way. The amount of reinforcements were kind of obnoxious. But chasing the Ancient down at the end was pretty cool. I felt a sense of purpose and not just a grind machine. Again, thank you for all the amazing and inspiring work on GW2.
Sincerely,
Tempest Kiss

I’m surprised. I expected this event to be as rewarding and clunky as every other part of the lost shores. I didn’t come. And neither did at least 40% of the community.

If you are going to put in a half decent reward, at least warn us first. I find it all incredibly insulting.

Much of the issue of the Lost Shore final phase was due to the lag but there are many complaints about the actual design of the event being too long, too boring etc. It’s strange since ArenaNet has done well in other aspects of the game such as the Fractals (which is really amazing). But in the final phase of the Lost Shores they did things which just don’t seem like they should be in a one time event.

Remove the one-shotting attacks. Lower the number and difficulty of mobs. Keep the difficult stuff for the 5 man dungeons where lag isn’t an issue and people can see the mob tells and have the time to consider strategy. In a one-time event, people are too frantic that they’re going to miss something to bother with much organization. Realize that you are dealing with a mob and design the event for the mob-mentality.

If this was a repeatable event you can do more complex designs but if people are only going to do this once, then make it for the mob. Because that’s what will show up.

Some may complain the event would seem too easy. I would trade that for what we saw today and wasting much of time laying there dead with dozens of other players waiting for others to finally push back the mobs to rez us.

The karka hive design was a terrible idea. Funneling mass numbers of players into an enclosed space and into what was basically a spiral choke/hallway no doubt added to the issue of rendering and lag. If you know there are going to be masses of players, give them a wide open area ALL the time to move and disperse the crowds

Don’t deliberately make movement annoying. The Lost Shores zone itself is filled with annoying shelves and steps that make simple maneuvering irritating. This is fine if one is exploring or doing a jumping puzzle, this isn’t good in a mass zerg where timing suddenly becomes an issue just to move up an incline.

This should have been considered in designing the event. The boss should have stayed in the flatter, more level areas and away from the areas with those shelved inclines.

More waypoints. Even if the lag is killing players, with better waypoints at least they could easily rez. People were refusing to rez in this event because they didn’t want to have run through all those annoying mobs that would Cripple, immobilize and kill a solo player. Speaking of which:

Get rid of those karka hatchling/headcrabs. Apart from the additional rendering issues. this goes back to not making the simple act of movement annoying. There’s no reason to slow down or kill players that are simply trying to get back to the event to try to eck out a little bit of XP while they suffer through the lagfest. These mobs have the sole purpose of making the simple act of movement a teeth-grinding pain and should never have been created.

It seems that the event would have gone off much better if it had been kept straightforward, simple and short. This seems like what should be done if this kind of event is attempted in the future.

Erebus Delirium.4892:

HOWEVER, I can tell this was intended to be a difficult fight. People who kept getting near the Ancient karka and then complaining about dying were completely foolish. People often just laid around without waypoint ressing too (though as I said I did encounter an issue with waypoint ressing). The problem is this event left lots of excuses in which players could scapegoat their own inadequacies to issues with the game itself.

I disagree entirely which this sentiment. The event design itself was flaws in ways I never expected to see from ArenaNet.

Read this post for the REAL reason people were not rezzing. I know this because I was chatting with the other players as we lay there dead. It was the zone and event design that served to make it needlessly tedious rather than making it enjoyable. The lag simply exacerbated what was already a badly made event.

I had a great time, especially with the final event.

The only thing I can really complain about is the culling issue. Others have done a great job in describing the chaos due to culling so I’ll just say that I hope that this is something that is either soon remedied or taken into account when designing future content.

All in all, I give the weekend a 4/5. A half point for the culling and a half point for the parts of the community that sought company in their misery. I know the community reaction is out of your hands ANet, but it’s part of the weekend and my gaming experience. Just the same, thanks for the fun and keep it coming!

The event was a huge letdown. I’ve been an Anet fangirl for years…so it’s painful for me to have to say that. But it was just bad. PLEASE reconsider how to go about it, before having another event like this one.

It should have been week long, instead of 3 days…plain and simple. This would have given more time to iron out the many issues, as well as let more people take part in it who weren’t able to for whatever reason.

Day one, for the intro event…there was so much lag, terrible framarates, and invisable foes that it was the farthest possible thing from “fun”. With tab+1+repeat I somehow managed to achieve Bronze for it. I’m not sure why you STILL insist on cramming the entire population of a server into one little confined space. If you intend to keep doing it that way, please give an option to hide other players’ spell effects, or other players alltogether. This would make it more managable for those with less than average gaming PCs. The server lag I understand is more complicated to solve…but if you’re gonna keep doing things this way…it needs to be solved.

FInale event…I intended to take part in it with my friend. TWO MINUTES before the event started, he got disconnected and kicked into an overflow. When he tried to rejoin me, he got a message that my server was full. When I tried to join him…I got a message that his server was full…screwed. The event itself had much less lag and FPS issues than Friday’s. But then I have to comment on the event itself. I would not consider it “epic”…more like “frustratingly drawn out”. Everybody fights for a while…everybody gets one-shotted…everybody resses…repeat for three hours. By the time it ended it was a crowd of worn out players fighting in their underwear because everyones’ gear was broken. I died just before the event finished, and had to beg for a res, since I was off to the side. LUCKILY someone was kind enough to come over and get me while everyone else was busy drooling over their loot.

Overall I’d say it was hyped up more than it was worth. The IDEA of it, the hints and tidbits leading up to it, the new area design…all were fantastic. The event itself and the way it was executed…not as good.

After some time to think, and cool off, i do have to say the first non-direct combat mechanics were quite fun in the 3rd phase, specifically dropping the tree, clearing the nests and using the geyser’s as improvised cannons and triggering a land slide were fun.

That being said, fighting mobs (and adds during the Ancient Karka) that could one/two shot mass groups of people was not only boring, it was an offensive mechanic. The same goes with making a creature of such high armor that that it takes the better part of ten minutes to kill it only to be followed up with a fresh health bar and two seconds to get the hell out of Dodge if you are in melee, and a quick prayer that you aren’t in one of a thousand ground effect attacks that kill you before you can get out of them.

The Karka was a good concept. Southsun Isle is beautiful. Fractals of the Mists is a wonderful dungeon, and without a doubt the best dungon to date. And this update will likely go down in history as the worst GW2 update. Ever.

Karka are unreasonably difficult to fight, to the point of making a monthly that was even all otherwise completed before heading to Southshore simply not worth it.
The clunky events, incredibly difficult trash mobs, and the lack of purpose drags Southshore down like an anchor. And the final event was deceptive. You give people incredibly buggy events leading up to a final battle, which by then half the community is prepared to happily ignore, and then around half the remaining participants are either dc’d or are killed and left to rot by a hostile community (i havn’t seen a MMO community turn this bad since Runescape) and then offer a king’s ransom to the lucky and lifeless that actually complete this event. I freely admit that i did not attend this final event, out of low expectations, despite making moderate personal sacrifices to make sure i could attend the sunday phase three start of shadows of the mad king, as well as the beginings of phases one and two of Lost Shores. I AM OFFENDED. Seriously, Southsun should be sunk to the bottom of the sea, and be forgotten. Maybe in GW3 you can actually make this work. But not yet.
Fractals are weighed down by ascended gear. Enough to even make this the worst aspect of this update.

I for one will oppose our new ascended overlords.

I posted this in the last merged thread
A picture is worth a thousand words. Here are my thoughts.

Overall it was fun but I think the problems certainly make the event less enjoyable. I completed the scavenger hunt on my main but couldn’t complete it on alts because of all the bugged NPCs. Three bugged NPCs in a chain quest is unacceptable. As it took a rebuild to fix them it meant people only had a short window after a rebuild before it broke again and wasn’t fixed before the entire quest shutdown.

The final quest with the ancient karka was fun be turned into a complete lag fest and I never have problems with lag (even when dragon hunting). I had to give up and log out twice before I got into an overflow where I could complete the quest. Luckily I looted the chest on my main but again, couldn’t do it on alts. As other people couldn’t even complete the quest once I’ll consider myself lucky.

Nice effort arenanet and hopefully the next events go a little smoother.

Only got to participating in the final events Sunday. Personal experience? Not fun.

After some two hours of going through the slog of seeing the explosives set, then pushing the ancient karka most of the way back to the next, my computer apparently overheated and shut down. Upon getting back on, I ended up in an overflow server that was back on the previous (protect the demo squad) stage. Fed up with that, I simply quit. The fights to that point had been so full of mass zerging and instant-downing effects that they had been much more trying than exciting.

And for the time and frustration? Event completion for the first step – with XP, karma, and coin that seemed roughly on par with a normal group quest. Very lackluster, especially after hearing about a chest at the end, but I guess that’s the price of committing part of an afternoon rather than the whole thing.

Kudos to those who completed and enjoyed the event, but I personally found it to be one of the most souring experiences in the game to date.

I loved the event, the scale of it, the fact you were not afraid to spawn mobs that wipe entire server zergs.
Some bits were a bit too long, namely the reinforcement stages whilst pushing the ancient karka back, but most of it was well scaled and I personally did not get any real lag until nearing the end when the servers started melting (although took a few minuets for the karka to show up graphicaly)
The thing with the reward is a different matter entirely, but the event as a whole was good

Overall, this event was a fiasco.

Positives: The new area is gorgeous. It’s one of the prettiest zones in the game. Your art team should be commended.

Fractals of the Mist is also a really cool dungeon with some fun mechanics, and I can see myself spending a lot of time there.

Negatives: The event launching it has made me never want to visit that beautiful zone again. The first one-time event was slow and tedious. It was literally hitting enemies that would not die for an hour . . . and then getting almost no reward at the end of it. And then everything afterwards was bugged to hell and gone.

The second one-time event was better. It was well-paced and pretty fun, though it petered off at the end and no-one was quite sure that it was done. Perhaps stronger narrative beats are necessary.

The third one-time event was awful. At first, it was fun to run in a huge mob, have whole-server wipes, throw ourselves against seemingly unstoppable karka. We all were chatting and joking and having a good time. By the second hour, that had ceased to be fun. Herding the ancient karka was a mixture of easy and fun events involving the environment (good!), and grinding down endless mobs (bad!). Those reinforcement sections were just morale-destroying. It went on far too long, and the rewards for completing the substages were just insulting.

I had to leave after two hours, which I think is more than a reasonable amount of time to commit to the event. I come back home to discover that the final chest was just a loot bonanza (out of all keeping with the paltry rewards for earlier stages), and rewarded not overall participation across the weekend but simply the final fight.

This experience has really soured me on the whole game. I feel like I’ve wasted a lot of time this weekend, which is not a feeling I’ve had before with your products, and I’ve been playing since the beta of Guild Wars 1, so I’m a long term fan. But, if this is the future of A.Net, I’m not sure whether I want to see it.

Hmm, since you lost my original post here it goes again +more:

Good stuff:
New Map is very pretty and dangerous! Very nice!
New Jumping puzzles (especially Skipping Stones) is awesome.
Fractal dungeons quite fun for the most part!

Not so good stuff:
Didn’t get to participate in opening or ending, but the map itself was a tad laggy (non event time). Possibly due to lots of people exploring
One-shot events rate a zero from me since I couldn’t participate. Sorry. Maybe run next 1-shot event at Oceanic time?
Hard to complete -investigation- steps when NPCs are bugged and are now missing.
Possibly lack of play testing on each server?
Left over items from investigation steps… what do we do with them?
Getting a group for Fractals will probably be more and more difficult for non grinders.
Also means it’s harder to get a group to do Story mode dungeons as the pool of players is spread out more.
New pretty land seems to have no purpose for non-crafters after story arc? Pretty sure I’m getting same drops from the zombies at Orr, for less effort. More events there (in Orr) that you can do with smaller groups more often too…
Mad King was better executed / delivered than Lost Shores

Suggestions:
More play testing for next event? (not sure if it’ll help, also I know it’s hard to load-test for big events)
Pick a different time slot for your next 1-time event. Anywhere but the one you have been currently catering to.
Timers + Titles on jumping puzzles?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/New-Titles-and-Timers/first#post785802

The wife and I came back to this game to do your special event ,we both crashed after wasting 4 hour’s fighting boss and we also got nothing for our time.

It was not enjoyable in the least.the jumping hand eye cordination puzzles is clearly for kids and not adult’s nor people with bad vision.I think the makers of this game are all under 40.

I doubt we’ll ever be back so good luck.

This is not a rant, but merely a statement. I’m done, least till changes are made that are both worthwhile and rewarding to all that play/enjoy the game. I have now seen 2 events come and go, and now as my personal life prohibited me from the apparent splendor of the rewards I have heard about, I do not fault for something that was beyond your control. However, what is in your control is the amount of time you allow for people to enjoy said content, play ability of said content, (lag spikes, random dc’ing) and as well, lessen the rewards to not start pumping out precursors like a vending machine. Seriously, I think that probably has me erk-ed the most. People who have played for countless hours, both with skill and luck, and not to mention a ton of gold, has only half a chance at a precursor, yet, people who came in to try the game on the free trial, … well, you know the rest. These events have also shown me that your system of implementation, is flawed. I know most of my guild could not even attempt the scavenger hunt due to bugs, glitches, etc etc. And not to mention but the event itself was apparently a disaster in its own right, again, lag, dc’ing, etc etc. Also know this information came from close friends and guild members of mine, as I had other responsibilities to attend to. I hope for future events being planned, more time is looked into how to make them run properly, as opposed to, throw it out there and cross fingers and hope for the best. Many parts of this game are broken, and try as I might to over look them, I find that this is just to much. This game has many things going for, it truly dose. But with the many things it has going for it, it currently has that many going against it. I would simply implore that you listen to your player base. Thank you.

I got hit by the d/c error in the final phase too. Just completed destroy the 2nd set of webbing in “Defeat the ancient karka”, when disconnected. This really blows.

The event for the most part was fun I liked how the zone was introduced but I think it could be handled a bit better in the future. First day had the most issues but the 2nd and 3rd were both fun. I was around for all three except I didn’t finish phase one since the underwater chest in kesex hills was bugged and I missed the end of the Ancient Karka fight due to massive amounts of lag and general connection problems.

Anyways, direct feedback time. First event as has been explained by most people did have a large variety of lag issues/bugs that were rather disappointing. From the results I think moving away from singular one time events would be a wise choice. An event that recurs every hour (or two or three hours) in a 24 hour period probably work better. It’d take the stain off that specific time and allow people who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to complete the event do so. In terms of exposition I think the story came out pretty decently, I really appreciated how it built a foundation to the story of the zone.

Second event was a little rough to get going. On my overflow nothing happened until someone said head for the boat. The events on the island were fun although it ended a bit abruptly and the zerg I was with was fairly confused and just kept fighting its way across the island. The zone itself is a great addition. Visually I really like the unique vibe it gives. Enemies are definitely more annoying than I would like and in some aspects worse than Orr mobs so like Orr it’s not a zone I will spend much time in. The jumping puzzles were fun, Stepping Stones in particular was absolutely amazing to run through and that alone probably made the weekend for me.

Third event was mostly good. It had some moments of hilarity such as, when the veteran karaka’s appeared for the first time with their massive AOE poison and the entire zerg bar maybe ten people got killed. That many downed players was incredibly funny to see. It also had some fun aspects, knocking down trees on the ancient karka, releasing steam vents were nice to break up the constant Karka slaying. Where the event falls short was the length. I was around for 2-2.5 hours and we still were pushing the karka. After that my connection got so bad I was unable to log back into the game until after the ancient karka was defeated. In other-words my reward for 2-2.5 hours was 2 pieces of crab meat, a shell and the repair cost for four damaged pieces of equipment. Also for over 2 hours of fighting it doesn’t seem like much was accomplish. It would have been a lot more fun if the events took 1/3 or 1/2 the time they did.

Overall I’d say the idea behind the event was solid. There are just a few technical things about how the event works out that would have made it an A+ event.

Epic events need momentum. It becomes borefest during bomb planting and reinforcements with the champions (veterans are rather okay).

Overflow size. I’ve crashed twice mid-event which meant restarting fresh twice. There’s just no chance of rejoining my party through right-click join or exiting & re-entering.

I missed Day 1 of the event since I was working, but was there for day 2 and the finale.

Day 2:
The start of the event was not obvious, but that may have been intended. You should communicate in advance that we won’t get a cutscene that will start the event if that was intended. Other than that, I LOVED that event. Going to Cove and trying to establish the WP, securing the beach and building bridges…. the feeling was great. Excellent work on that.

Day 3 (finale):
I was there from start to finish. It was a massacre. When 4-5 vets were rolling, players were falling like flies. Overall, I liked the event, but I felt it was too long and there was just too much at one time. Often I couldn’t see the Karkas, lag was present, etc. The best part for me was when the Ancient Karka showed up. Starting there to the final battle, I enjoyed every single bit of it, except the 2 phases of Reinforcements that were really too long. Other phases where we needed to provoke a rock slide, etc. that was fun.

But I feel for people missing the event. Not just for loot, but for the event itself. Maybe next time you should have an event that repeats for some time (in instances ?) where people get loot according to their involvement (and no loot if already opened the chest). That would allow everybody to play it.

Overall, I liked it, with Day 2 as a highlight.

nullixin.9462:

Epic events need momentum. It becomes borefest during bomb planting and reinforcements with the champions (veterans are rather okay).

Overflow size. I’ve crashed twice mid-event which meant restarting fresh twice. There’s just no chance of rejoining my party through right-click join or exiting & re-entering.

Crashed twice also, for the first time. Had to kill GW2.exe and restart it. But I was able to join my party in my overflow.

That final event was a ridiculous, 3 hour long, rez-fest. Due to lag, disconnects and just plain stupid content, we finished up with significantly fewer people than the number we had when we started. I would like to know if this is characteristic of how the events are going to be, so I can know to skip them.

I doubt anet will read this, but this event was such a pain that I feel the need to vent…this was a pretty cool idea, but the execution sucked, esp. the phase 3 event. not even going to care about the phase 1 bugs, which were just kitten (seriously, those had to be the easiest part of all this and you couldn’t get those right). Phase 2 was OK, it almost made up for phase 1, but phase 3 just didn’t work.

wandering with this massive zerg of people is not that exciting. esp. when (during the reinforcements phases), I got lagged so bad it was taking 30 sec – 1 minute for anything to happen on a key press. Plus you really couldn’t see anything because of all the skill effects. And speaking of not seeing anything, I really just can’t describe how fun it is to get face rolled by enemies I can’t see because there are so many people/enemies/effects/wtfever on screen. i managed to stick it out through the rewards, which were nice, but overall the whole thing was more an exercise in patience than in fun.

Please take these events back to something similar-ish to the GW1 instances. group folks up in 20 – 50 person chunks, tone down the map so there’s no lag or enemy visibility problems. surely you can find a way to make something like this happen? i’ll continue to play, but this seriously tested my faith. hope wintersday is better.

I was extremely disappointed with this event, at least the “3-day-only” portion of it. I ran into bug after bug after bug with the scavenger quest, to the point where I was unable to complete it despite 2 full days of participation. I am relieved to hear that the reward was only a mere 5 cc tokens, but the experience has actually kind of soured me on the game as a whole.

Nice to see some other people enjoyed it too. I had fun with it. I had to take a break during the second set of reinforcements (the one outside the camp) because it was taking forever but I was okay with it because I could. I just parked myself in the camp and wandered off for 5 minutes.

I was very pleasantly surprised with the rewards as I honestly expected to get 3-5 blues (maybe a green) of level 70-79. Even when I was running to the chest expecting nothing but vendor trash I was happy with what I had experienced this weekend. After I opened the chest I was ecstatic.

I think too many people forget the game only cost $60 and this and Halloween were free. I don’t play that heavily and I’m up to 450+ hours. That’s $0.13 per hour of entertainment already and I plan to play a lot more (still have a 56 guardian I want to 100% the world with).

Sure some things could have been better but it’s all just growing pains of a new MMO and I’m alright with that.

I am not a forum poster, but I want my voice to be heard. Traditionally, I am an ardent defender of ArenaNet, but today, unfortunately, I too must express my disappointment. I was not available for the first event due to school, so I missed that. That is fine with me anyway. I was online for the second and third events. The second event went moderately well, and I was pleased that I was not experiencing the lag that others had mentioned. Of course, my server ended up waiting ten minutes after killing the karka to see what was going to happen next. Today I suffered through the third event. The third event was so incredibly tedious that my server was at it for over two hours. It consisted of an overly hard zerg fest of players with intense lag. I crashed after thirty minutes and then rejoined the game on another server, where the event was just starting. Rather than enjoying the content, the entire time I was freaking out about the possibility that I would crash during the event, or even worse, right before the event ended. I heard the loot was good so I stuck with it and managed to pull through. I was one of the lucky ones who got his loot. I heard about many people that missed out on their loot after two hours of that event and I was just appalled. If I had any suggestions based off this experience they would be, do not have one time events like this if they are going to be riddled with bugs, tune down the difficulty and monotonously long fights, and anticipate more players on the servers to come up with a way to prevent lag.

The permanently new content is generally good. Southsun Cove is very aesthetically pleasing but lacks purpose. There is no reason to go there when half the mobs are veterans, there is hardly any loot, there are not many events, and the area is painfully annoying to traverse. If the rewards for exploring the area were significantly buffed, it would make it a great, worthy place to visit. The new dungeon, Fractals of the Mists is absolutely fantastic, and, in my mind, makes up for the rest of the mess this event has been. I really have to say bravo because content like that dungeon is what will probably keep me playing this game for years. It is also a great way to please both the casual and hardcore players.

In the end, things like this happen and it doesn’t damper the game’s overall entertainment value for me. If you listen to the feedback you are getting and use it, you will on the path to a very bright future, with more content like the Fractals of the Mists dungeon.

I find it hard to believe someone considers this the “best event ever”. I simply find no joy in fighting (and dying) to mobs that I often can’t see because of the game’s culling issues. The intentions were good, the battle had the makings of being epic, but the delivery was very poor due to the many problems plaguing large scale events.

The best I could honestly say is “Thanks for the effort. Wish it had worked a lot better”.

I feel like this thread is turning a blind eye to the reality because there were shiny’s in a chest.

Just finished the final event after my 3rd time trying to complete it. I was at it from 3 PM (EST) till almost midnight with a 2 hours break in-between. Crashed at the final boss battle the first time. My 2nd time, the demo team was bugged mid-way in their chain. I gave it another go and saw the ending this time. Also, the reinforcements phase didn’t take ages the 3rd time so it was bearable. I think the whole chain took a bit less than 2 hours including the running from landing point up to the hive (as opposed to over 3 hours on my first run). However, it was rather annoying trying to find a way to get into an overflow with a working event. If it wasn’t for the ingenuity of this fabulous community I, and many others, would have never made it to the end.

The last battle and the ending were both really brilliant. So I could up my score from 6 to 7/10 for the whole event.

But a poor 4/10 if you weight in all the lag/crashes/bugged events.

Beautiful post, Whiskeyjack.

I’d like to add the frustration of the timing and it being a one-time event. I work 10 hour days, and have to travel anywhere (traffic dependant) from half an hour to an hour to get to work. This takes 12 hours out of my day for work, and the event started at 8am my time, Monday morning. My slim hope is that I can get home and find an overflow server that the event is still running on. This cannot be a ‘by design’ feature from Anet, it strikes me more as player ingenuity.

I’d like to say having it repeat every 3-4 hours over a 24 hour period, rather like GW1 events would be good. If you were worried about people farming the event, make the chest only openable once by an account rather than by character. Considering this game is played worldwide, creating a one-time event is just ridiculous. And then to give the possibility of such high-end rewards.

While I am appreciative of the amount of effort done to release free expansions and events for a non-subscription based game, with this particular instance I am disappointed.

Minus the “reinforcement” part (which took an eon) i thought the hole event was as interest as it gets, in a good way.

Im glad anet finally decided to drop a chest worth eventing for. Cheers for that!. :-)

First off, I love this game but as of late not so much:(

So finally found a OF server. I have to say…what a waste of my time. This just proves that the combat system is terribly flawed, there where maybe…….3 melee out of the 200+ players. They where contently dead. The middle part lasted way to kitten long…why? Why did that make it passed testing? Then the loot chests is finally there and 90% of the people got nothing of any value what so ever. A bag and a trinket? This is not WoW, this is GW2. I want 4 bloody hours of my time to be worth something.

This event is and was a lot of fun, for the first hour. Then it just drug on and on and on. You cant do that. That is lazy game design, if your going to make a event you cant have people beating on piles of rocks and webbing for 45 minutes or killing 100+ mobs just to make the stupid bar go up.

In closing

Combat system needs a complete overhaul in PvE
Big events like this NEED to be better thought out
Loot system needs to give items you can actually use
You need to fix the lag issue and the invisible enemy’s

I love you arena net I know you will work hard to really make this game something but right now I am having a really hard time enjoying GW2

i’ll say, THIS is how you do a one-time event. it was massive, it was balanced to the amount of players that would naturally be experiencing it (a crapton), and more importantly, it seems ANet finally heard us and gave us a proper reward (an amazing one at that). we’ll see if giving exotics away as rewards really affects the market or not, but the prices of ectos are already back to what they were before the event, and the price on named exotics is slowly heading back to normal.

THAT SAID, there were three big problems with it:

1- the reinforcements segments took way too long. i’d say about 70% of the final event was spent on the two reinforcements segments. those were a paaaaaaaaain.

2- the culling. oh god the culling. if it wasn’t enough to have an army of one-shotting mobs attacking us, they’re invisible. my poor thief had nothing to fight them other than the occasional cluster bomb (which takes like 5 seconds just to land) and dagger storm.

3- the massive, unbearable lag. on my overflow, it kicked at the end of the first reinforcement segment, and stuck around until the end of the second. so a lot of time, with an input delay so heavy you couldn’t even tell if your commands were working, and rubberband making your character teleport everywhere.

those are my 3 complaints, only one is a design issue (the reinforcements could’ve been easier/shorter), and two are technical issues that i hope ANet are already actively working on (the culling issue is a long known enemy of GW2). other than that, excellent job on ending this event.

I just did the repeat event as I was working at 2 cst when the event started here. I went through 3 hours of the event to fall through the hole twice and run back from pride point waypoint. and as soon as I get back to the chest, it disappears and I get no loot. What a waste of 3 hours. :\ How unfair. :\ It didn’t even take me that long to run back twice.

I started to do the event. Then lag started.

People’s skills were delayed by MINUTES.
Even chat was delayed by MINUTES.
My character couldn’t move from the spot.
I saw people dying right and left.
I was at full health and then suddenly no health. Then defeated with out any of my skills responding.

Then the server crashed and every one was kicked out half way through the event.

I did not re-attempt it. It was very disappointing. Getting to work by 9am was more important any how.

Really? So the 200+ page Ascended Item Thread became a “discussion” thread that wasn’t considered an official feedback thread, then the 15+ page Feedback thread got eaten, and now this sticky got put up on the evening at the tail end of the event on a forum that will probably be going away with said event? Wow. Just… wow.

Well, on to the feedback.

I felt there was a lot of potential in these events, but not a lot of payoff, and that this fun gap was almost entirely due to how they were implemented. The scavenger hunts and karka attacks not only didn’t play to your strengths this weekend, they seemed to intentionally highlight the weaknesses of the game’s engine and design.

A giant zerg event in the game’s busiest hub city, and a huge multi-hour boss fight were frankly terrible ideas given the state of the engine and its dev-admitted issues with player culling. I know I fought a skrittload of karka this weekend, but I’ll be kittened if I actually SAW more than 20% of them. Not being able to see what you’re fighting is annoying. Having to deal with a slideshow on a decent computer for 3 hours when the things that you are fighting are easily able to take out 25-40% of your HP with one attack, and ALSO have several knockdowns that can only be avoided if you dodge while they wind it up – and not being able to see it when they do? It was frustrating. And ultimately… boring.

Which is a shame, because I thought there were a lot of interesting, engaging things done with how we fought the Ancient Karka, and would like to see more things like it in the future. But on that note, in addition to the engine issues, let’s also try to hammer home something that seems to be a design issue: ANet, long =/= challenging. This fight fell into the same hole that a lot of your boss fights seem to, wherein bosses just have too much HP for what they actually do. If the stages were 30% shorter – ESPECIALLY the TWO “defeat reinforcements” stages – this fight, and several others, would have been a lot more engaging. As it was, once you understood the rules of engagement, it just became a slog.

That’s enough on the karka invasions. My other big problem was the bugginess of the investigation missions. This bothered me for 2 reasons: First, you guys know full well that events wherein you talk to an NPC, then they become hostile, then you have to kill them bug out all the time. It’s been a major problem since launch. So why did you go ahead and build the investigation around it? Technically it was unsound.

Second, and in my opinion, worse – stylistically it fell flat. The idea of uncovering a conspiracy by the Consortium was a cool one, but the medium chosen for it screamed… NOT that. I know you guys like to encourage open world co-op as a major driving principle of gameplay, but instances are not inherently bad things that must be relegated to dungeons and personal story. When you’re trying to tell a more intimate story about intrigue and mystery, a semi-hidden instance portal is a much better tool for the job. It both encourages the sort of one-on-one (or one-on-five in a group) encounters that makes more sense from a narrative perspective of tracking down and interrogating suspicious persons, and vanishing away the people who find the entrance makes the challenge of discovering the NPC an actual, y’know, challenge. It really loses something to go to the Hanto Trading Post and then just stand there until you see the pile of 20 people spamming AoEs load in, and then just go “Oh, yeah. Guess he’s there. Mystery solved.”

(continued)

(continued)

Fractals are interesting. Frankly, I kind of wish that the difficulty ramped up and we were allowed to go back to the hub in between every Fractal, and that progress wasn’t saved between runs, so that there would be less player stratification – everyone starts from square one every time and can either jump off the ride and start over or push up into the higher tiers as they like.

Which brings us finally to… Ascended gear. It’s terrible, and every day seems to bring information about how it’s actually worse than I feared it would be. As said, there’s a 200+ page thread mostly consisting of how it’s terrible from a conceptual and PR standpoint. I’m exceedingly disappointed that they exist, that they depend on random drops, and that they require a massive amount of grind for what is going to ultimately amount to a fairly significant stat boost. I’m upset and seriously reconsidering my committment to this game both because it seems like a clear reversal of the past 7 years of dev comments about the nature of the game, and because endless vertical progression – which you have now opened the door for in players’ minds, no matter what you say – is lazy design and introduces the looming spectre of power creep.

You guys are so close to hitting the mark, and it has pained me all weekend to watch what feels so much like missing that mark on your end, and setting such a perilous precedent for the future.

I had no problem seeing the mobs and my computer is far from top of the line.. Maybe you just need to update your hardware?

Makes me think of back on SWtoR Ilum fights on my old pos computer where I couldn’t see anything or do anything. Built a new PC on a budget of 1k and it was night and day.

Not saying your computer is good or bad but I get the feeling there are a lot of people crying about stuff like not being able to see things because they are running this game on less then optimal set ups.

The event was a blast and as I said before the only thing I would have asked to be changed was how long the reinforcements stages took.

Sorry you had those problems though..

O and to say they should have to warn people the reward is going to be good is silly. If you were on and chose not to come that is on nobody ells but you… 1 time event said enough.

This event seemed too rushed in planning, thus poorly executed. allow me to recount the experiences from Day 1.

Day 1: I happily stuck around and risked losing my job to watch the theatrical trailer to introduce the event, then proceeded to the coast to participate. Which lagged so bad, I couldn’t see the other players nor what I was fighting, but hey… I did what I could and turned in some of the items for the event but got d/c’d before completion so missed the Karma.

Later I got on to try and do Fractals. I got level 1 done, but because the floating asuran ruins map kept glitching and crashing the .exe, I could not progress. It didn’t matter if my party waited up either, because once you get kicked from the instance, you can’t rejoin.

Day 2: I’m at work, yet able to play. Miss the theatrical, but no biggie. I got back to be able to hop the boat, participate in some events and explore.

Tried doing Fractals again thinking maybe they got enough feedback about the glitches, but wouldn’t you know it… the same map crashes me out again. Still can’t progress.

Day 3: Day off! So I am online and on time. I login and port over to be d/c’d. I get back in and get into the overflow my pt of friends are on and we do the setting detonation charges event, then rush over to push the Ancient Karka back… all the while fighting lag and trying to realize we got delayed graphical effects for poison and doing our best to avoid some of the mass party wipes. Two of us are lagging so bad that we’re useless fodder, especially when another event collided with the Ancient Karka one which lead to d/c’s and relogs. Since it is so bad and it’s been 2.5hrs by then… I take a small break, leaving my character logged in so that maybe I can get my karma.

Nope, was kicked off and couldn’t get back in (error with login server). Finally get back in and try to rejoin my friends who are in another party in another overflow trying to compete the event (they got d/c’d too). Kept trying, glitched and could no longer even attempt to rejoin them.

Thinking that’s a failure and no way to recover the experience, I decide to try Fractals again…. but by now, much of the ppl are several levels further in progression and no one wants to backtrack. But hell, why should they? Especially if the maps are still glitching and crashing people out.

This whole experience was just so disappointing. PS. You can at least stick an NPC in Lion’s Arch that gives players the option to watch the Theatricals they missed. Not that hard really… setup an NPC, C program it to offer the different theatricals as options, play files.

Even I can write such a simple program within 5 minutes.

Agien.9834:

I had no problem seeing the mobs and my computer is far from top of the line.. Maybe you just need to update your hardware?

Makes me think of back on SWtoR Ilum fights on my old pos computer where I couldn’t see anything or do anything. Built a new PC on a budget of 1k and it was night and day.

Not saying your computer is good or bad but I get the feeling there are a lot of people crying about stuff like not being able to see things because they are running this game on less then optimal set ups.

The event was a blast and as I said before the only thing I would have asked to be changed was how long the reinforcements stages took.

Sorry you had those problems though..

Please don’t go there. This is a known problem on ANet’s end that they’ve been trying to find a solution for. It is not a user problem, or a problem with any player’s system.

You say you had “no problem seeing mobs”. You either apparently think the Karka have cloaking technology, or assumed they were “spawning” on top of players by design. Neither is accurate. Whether you realize it or not there is a big difference between what you actually saw and what you were supposed to be able to see.

Overall, I feel that this event had good points and bad points; I did have fun during the weekend, but there were so many things that could have been improved, and I’m going to try and go into as many as I can remember. I hope this feedback proves to be useful and constructive.

Day 1 Opening Event

Unfortunately things got off to a shaky, lagtastic start, ANet. On paper, it sounds awesome; Lion’s Arch gets invaded by unknown, powerful monsters, and players must fight them off. Unfortunately, cramming hundreds (maybe more? I have no idea how many players are normally present in a district) of players into a small area, coupled with dozens of spell effects and multiple monsters, was just a recipe for disaster. I, my guildies, and many other players in the chat were commenting that we were lagging so badly that our attacks weren’t registering, it could take up to half a minute before skills activated, players were frequently dying from unseen monsters in only a few seconds, and we couldn’t get any kills because monsters were probably dead a good 10 seconds before we actually saw it happen. (And because we couldn’t get any kills, we also couldn’t get any trophies to give to the NPC, making us feel useless.)

Maybe there were technical reasons behind the design of the encounter, but I feel you should have split up the event into 3 separate “attack zones” scattered across the city (my suggestions? One up on the Lighthouse area, one down by the beach on the other side, and the last one in the Pirate cove to the north). This would split up the player base into distant enough areas to eliminate or reduce lag and culling, and allow more people to feel a meaningful sense of contribution. I can’t stress this enough as something to take into account when designing future events.

Day 1 Investigations and Scavenger Hunts

This was a fun part of the event, and I particularly enjoyed the dialogue for Levvi and Blingg. The only problem comes from NPCs getting bugged in such a way as to stop progress altogether. I’m unsure as to whether this is the same bug that resulted in Skill NPCs staying permanently dead, but until the source of this bug is located and fixed, then you MUST have support GMs on-hand during future events so that they can reset these broken NPCs when they occur. (I have seen posts on the Bug forum from devs stating that they have reset other Dynamic Events, so I know this is possible.) Assign one support staff for every 2 – 4 servers, and have them visit each server whenever word gets out of a bugged NPC.

My other major (MAJOR) complaint about the Phase 1 investigations is how they were so time-limited. I was lucky in that I managed to complete Kiel’s hunt on all my characters, but I only had enough time to complete Miyani’s hunt on one (mostly because I didn’t realise that she also had a scavenger hunt). There’s nothing preventing you from also having two other NPCs remain in Lion’s Arch that continue to collect the trophies after Levvi and Kiel departed so that players who missed out on Phase 1 due to other commitments can also continue to do the quests on the next day.

Going forward, you really need to give players more time to complete these events. Spreading the activities out over an entire week would have been a better solution. Have the Phase 1 events take place over a week, have the next phase start on Saturday (so that it will be Sunday for people in the Eastern Hemisphere), and then run the events for the next Phase for another week. This also gives your staff time to correct any errors that may arise.

On a related note, thank you for keeping all of the NPCs quite close to low-level areas, so that players who aren’t very far into the game can still access this content!

Day 2 Opening Event and Activities

This was another buggy event for me, as it did not start at the stated time. There were many of us in the server feeling a lot of anguish over missing the event, and debating whether or not to simply bail and join the main event taking place on Southsun Cove. (The event did eventually start, but it was 45 mins after the stated time.)

The opening events on Southsun Cove and the island itself went quite well, however. Being able to see and assist in the story of how the current status of Southsun Cove came to be is quite fulfilling. The island is beautifully designed, and the Skipping Stones puzzle was a lot of fun even though I’ve yet to beat it. I think you may need to look at tweaking the difficulty of Veteran Karka and Reef Drakes, as they seem disproportionally powerful compared to other monsters of their level.

—Cont.—

Day 3 Opening Event and Activities

I quite enjoyed the story and design of the Phase 3 events. I have only two complaints, although they’re big ones.

The first complain links back to the issues raised during the Day 1 opening event. There were SO many players taking part in the event that lag and culling was a significant problem. Once again, you were often dying at the hands of invisible monsters, were not able to damage any enemies thanks to the lag, and thus were getting no loot or XP. I also had an issue whereby after dying, I tried to rally at the nearest waypoint, but was permanently stuck in a loading screen. (I managed to fix this by closing the GW2 client, logging back in, and then rejoining my party.)

Another minor issue linked to the first is “Did you REALLY need so many Veterans and Champions showing up?” It got to a point where it was just so TEDIOUS trying to whittle down these monsters. A Veteran or two is fine, maybe even a Champion at rare occasions, but having 4 – 7 Veteran Karkas assaulting you was just excessive. If the enemies had been mostly conventional enemies with the odd one or two Veterans, the event would have gone a lot faster and been more satisfying, I feel.

The second, and biggest complaint, lies in the final reward for the closing finale. Don’t get me wrong; I’m VERY happy with the amount of loot I got, and the fact that people have a chance to get Precursors from the chest is WONDERFUL. I am VERY pleased and thankful with your decision on this, ANet. (I am a little miffed that players who are upscaled do not have a chance to get Precursors at all, but the fact that many more Precursors are now available on the market is a very good thing.)

What I’m MOST displeased with is the fact that if you happen to live in a timezone where making this event is all but impossible, you are now short of all that wonderful loot. I was lucky in that I could still make it despite living in Oceania, but many, MANY other players in my region were not so lucky. 12 Noon PDT makes it either at an ungodly hour in the morning (on a Monday!) for people in Asia, while for people in New Zealand, the work/school day has already started and they have no way of making it to this event. 2 Rares, 2 Exotics (one of whom could be a Precursor), a free 20 slot Bag, and a level 80 Exotic accessory is a BIG thing to miss out on.

If ANet continues to set finale events at these times, then these people will be continually losing out on the chance to get expensive, one-of-a-kind loot, which is extremely unfair.

Again, ANet, I urge you to rethink these events so that they take place over a number of weeks, and to set finale events so they happen on Saturday (US time) so that people from the Eastern Hemisphere can have more opportunity to make these events. Furthermore, please consider making these events more akin to “mission” instances. You form a party, the party leader talks to an NPC and your party (along with up to 3 other parties for a total of 20 players) are sent into an instance to battle the “Big Bad Enemy”. Afterwards, the party is sent back to the main area where they can collect their reward from an NPC (only once per character/account, as appropriate). In this way, a finale event can be available over an entire day, lag and culling won’t be such a huge issue, and you still get to retain that sense of a “one-time event that changes the face of Tyria” (the player was there, they completed the mission, and now know what happened to make Southsun Cove the way it is).

Fractals of the Mists

I have not yet tried the Fractals dungeon, but feedback about it so far seems to be extremely positive, so well done on creating another exciting and fun thing to do in GW2.

Conclusion

I hope that you will take these suggestions and feedback on board in the spirit that they were given, ANet. There is a LOT of potential for GW2, and we want to help you make these events even more fun and exciting for the years ahead. Thank you for all your hard work and effort that’s gone into Lost Shores, and may Wintersday truly be a time to remember.

unfortunately this will just get moved to a merged feedback thread, and your post, like mine, disappears into nothing

I’d like to give some thoughts on the whole event of this weekend, but since I’m an Oceanic player…I honestly can’t. By that, I mean because of the events being at rediculous hours for us (especially on a work day) I was not able to see one event, let alone participate in any of them.

All this weekend gave for most Oceanic players was fractuals, which are staying around and so not really related to the events. They are fun, and the few I’ve done seem a lot better then the other dungeons, but doesn’t take away the sting of basically missing the entire weekend.

Basically this event for myself and I’m sure other Oceanic and Asia players resulted in, logging on, doing the scavenger chains swamped with bugs for worthless rewards and stumbling into the new zone with all the major events already completed with nothing much to do there (I could be wrong but is there anything honestly of worthwhile to do in the new zone apart from look at the pretty scenery?).

The whole thing has left a bad taste in my mouth towards GW2 and its future events and how ANet apparently wish to conduct their business and view their playerbase. The Halloween event actually made me want to login everyday and play even after I was unable to see the one time event, this however has made me debate if I even want to touch this game anymore since it feels like any future event is just going to repeat the samething..

I’d call it a comedy of errors, if it wasn’t such a nightmare.

I’m sure you, and every other online gaming company, are relishing in the fact that most gamers misuse the terms “bug” and “glitch” for what should be termed poor programming. The programming in the event was horrendous, and obviously untested in part, or altogether. And the time to fix problems was far too excessive for a short-term event.

To have the event run so poorly on a weekend when you have invited people to try your game, is completely mind-boggling. Frankly, that shows a total lack of care about the game.

Now, I’m not sure if you’ve had resources pulled from this game to work on start-up of the next NCSoft MMO, or if you have lost people through other means, but I have noticed a lot of open job positions for the game. If that is part of the reason things went awry, I have empathy, but not sympathy, for your situation. There are no valid excuses for any business putting out a faulty product.

As for NCSoft, maybe it would be wise to concentrate your efforts on making fewer, really good MMOs, than making another one every year, diluting your best resources. I think the gaming community as a whole would appreciate a few “shining stars” as opposed to handsfulls of more so-so games.

Hrrrmn. Looks like my last feedback post might have been lost. If it has, the general gist was:

Bugs happen – something that works on the test server may not necessarily keep working in the wild (we saw this with GW1 too, just that GW1 rarely had anything as time-sensitive as this event). The first phase, at the very least, probably could have been left to run for a week or so beforehand – that way, bugs during the first day or so could have been shrugged off rather than being as big a deal as they were in this event when everyone affected by them was keenly aware that the clock was ticking.

Second, the bugs observed during Phase 1 seemed to all be based on the events not resetting properly. Could such events in future be placed into personal-story style instances? This would serve a triple purpose of eliminating the possibility of events not resetting, eliminating having to wait for a reset even when the event is working properly, and maintaining the challenge of any fights involved rather than simply being a zergfest of dozens of players dogpiling the NPC.

Having summarised my previous comments regarding phase 1, onto the finale:

One of the frustrations that arose in much of the finale is that short of standing well clear (too far away to participate, that is) whether you died or not was pretty much a matter of luck. With that many objects to render and the lag experienced as a result on many systems and connections, dodge-or-die attacks (such as the roll on adult karkas) had often already progressed too far to be avoided by the time any telegraphing had been rendered by the client system, and in some cases the creature executing the attack hadn’t even rendered until after the PC was downed or defeated. With this in mind, I would suggest one of the following the following for mass events:

1) Eliminate dodge-or-die style attacks. In all seriousness, I think I saw one karka roll take out a few dozen characters – while they may be big, there’s got to be a point at which the bodies they’re rolling across are going to kill their momentum.

2) Take the sting out of death in mass events by removing or ameliorating the penalties. For instance, repair NPCs in the location during and shortly after a mass event might waive their usual fees as their contribution to the struggle and in recognition of the player’s roles as front-line combatants in the fighting.

that “bag” as you put it, is worth 10g
That “trinket” is only obtained from that chest, or from 1000 karka shells (18g value)

While I’ll agree the event does drag on, the bag alone made the event worth doing 3x for me.