Guild Wars 2

But it always running events in American time zone, if they have events for each time zone, will it be more fair for everyone? But sadly no, things are not going in this way.

The ideas were good, the intentions were good, the implementation was horrible.

You should’ve expected major latency issues, and avoided free trials during the first big event, promising content updates and changes to the world (which was delivered). The intention to draw in new players are good, but it just backfired, e.g.; several of my friends said they kept disconnecting this weekend and won’t be buying the game, thinking it’s normal that it has connection issues. They don’t want to invest $60 on something they believe is unstable, and while I’ve tried suggesting that this may be in part because of the trials and the event, I do understand them. (Note: I do not believe it would have been without issues if the free trial weekend wasn’t running, but it may have helped slightly.)

If Southsun Cove were instanced to be at most 30-50 players per map, it may have reduced the framerate troubles that most experienced, as well as the invisible foes. It could probably help reduce certain latency issues as well, as they seemed to mainly kick in when every single person present, were attacking one specific enemy (during the last stages of the event).

I am also disappointed to see that everything fluff-related in the form of skins and miniatures, were available in one single gambling chest, which sole purpose is to draw as much money out of players as possible. They did drop from the event foes, as I did get a shoulder skin from a Karka, but the rate was low (referencing other players about their experience). What I wanted, was the miniatures, as I love collecting them, but at the same time I do not wish to spend 70 Gold+/- (which can buy you ~6000 Gems) on the set of pets (which is my problem, I know). I would much rather see (at least) the miniatures available as a seperate purchase. If these pets (and skins) are permanent rare drops in Southsun Cove, then I at least have no problems, nor will I feel as demotivated and disappointed, with how it were implemented. I do however fear that the boat has sailed and that they no longer drop.

Lastly, I don’t think it’s necessary to have such an incredibly limited approach to “one-time” events. It could very well have repeated the several stages throughout the day. A lot more players would experience it, a lot more players would spread out on when they participate, logging in when they have the time and wish to do so. Limiting it to one location, one time slot, isn’t perhaps the best approach. Why not seperate those that has completed the event and those that hasn’t in different “overflows”/instances? As soon as enough players that haven’t completed the content are present, pop up a “queue” notification asking if the player wants to do the content, re-enter the queue or leave the queue.

Bad things aside, there was a lot of great things with this update

I absolutely love the new dungeon. Fractals of the Mists is a little masterpiece full of beautiful scenery and, at least to me, interesting encounters and mini-puzzles. It is so far some of the most entertaining instanced content I’ve had the pleasure to play in a MMO, and I can’t wait to see what future content updates brings in terms of dungeons. Looking forwards to the fix on “crashes” not allowing you to re-enter and continue with your group.

I quite enjoy the new sPvP map as well, and any new addition made to this part of the game is more than welcome.

I wish to thank you for the great event rewards; The 20 slot Ancient Karka Shell Box and Ancient Karka Shell are excellent little treasures to be had. I think it was nice that the chest had a chance at granting precursors too, although I know a lot of players are unhappy about this (Note: I did not get any precursor dropped.)

Southsun Cove is a pretty little map. I quite enjoyed the Skipping Stones jumping puzzle. It’s nice to see new enemies added so early in the games life. Veteran/Champion Karkas actually feels a bit scary when alone!

Thank you for the new Ranger’s Reef Drake pet! I absolutely love it. Great detail, and I love the Confusion skill.

And bad experiences aside, thank you for the event; it did seem like it would have been plenty more fun, if it weren’t for the fact that there were too many players on the screen, latency issues as well as some minor framerate issues. I hope in the future you implement new means of presenting content like this.

Jaric.5679:

DanielDust.3742:

bufko.2497:

One-Time events are awesome, the only thing needed is a better solution for bringing them to all timezones.

There’s an extremely simple solution for that.

They are going to get negative responses either way, so they should focus on actually making things doable for every time zone and that is easily achievable by locking server migration for the duration of the event and introducing the events at certain, different hours, for every region, that way servers wouldn’t melt because of all the players going at it, at the same time (that means better performance for everyone), people won’t benefit and abuse from transferring to regions that are just about to start the event and some people won’t have to wake up at 2-5 AM in the morning to participate.

Personally I had no problem with the timing, but the servers aren’t capable of sustaining such events at the same time and I see how it can be a huge problem for lots of people that simply can’t participate due to time differences.

Inform of what servers are going to have the event at what times, a week in advance, to allow people to have a week to plan which server they want to get on. That’s the only amendment to your idea I can think of.

These past two ‘one time’ events have happened at 8am on a Monday morning for me, with work it’s impossible to attend.

The servers starting first will be overwhelmed, the servers starting last will be ghost towns, particularly if the rewards can only be claimed once per-account (which is a change they should make).

Improve the servers and lower the player-threshold and push out more overflows for one-time events. Start all events at the same time.

Parthis.2091:

I’m fine with one-time events. In fact I’d like to see more of them. I know it sucks if you can’t make it, but that’s life…

For some reason I doubt you’d have the same opinion if the event started at 5am GMT on a Monday.

JeffGK.9043:

But it always running events in American time zone, if they have events for each time zone, will it be more fair for everyone? But sadly no, things are not going in this way.

Why would it be fairer?

There will always be people who can’t play because of the time it’s held, regardless of the time. Personally sunday evening is preferable to sunday lunch time (ask anyone with kids, for example).

The reality is that all Anet can do is improve the performance of the servers, work on the lag, add grace periods to disconnects and keep releasing unique events.

Half of the complaints are coming from people who didn’t get a pre-cursor and are feeling butthurt. Remove them from the loot tables.

Well the fact is that nobody did have to pay anything for the this FREE content update, the 60 dollars you spend when you bought the game didn’t include this free content update so the “we paid for this” argument isn’t anything to come up with. Besides if you missed it this time maybe you will get to do the next arenanet puts out and then someone else will miss it, they can’t satisfy everyone.

Mif.3471:

Parthis.2091:

I’m fine with one-time events. In fact I’d like to see more of them. I know it sucks if you can’t make it, but that’s life…

For some reason I doubt you’d have the same opinion if the event started at 5am GMT on a Monday.

Only you don’t know my circumstances, and you’re wrong.

The reality is there is no perfect time for everyone to do this stuff… so the choice becomes NEVER do this stuff, or do this stuff and accept that not everyone will be able to take part.

One-time events are preferable to never seeing the world change.

Mufflarn.2137:

Well the fact is that nobody did have to pay anything for the this FREE content update, the 60 dollars you spend when you bought the game didn’t include this free content update so the “we paid for this” argument isn’t anything to come up with. Besides if you missed it this time maybe you will get to do the next arenanet puts out and then someone else will miss it, they can’t satisfy everyone.

How do you think ANet managed to pay for development of this event?
How do you think ANet could pay those designers to make this happen?
Do you think they are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts?

Ppl who pay money every day in gem shop payed for this. The event and the update is not by any means free. It was just not payed by everyone.

Mungrul.9358:

Two, set the player limit for zones connected to one-time events a LOT lower than it is currently set. While I appreciate what you’re trying to strive for, and admire the spectacle you’re trying to create, your technology obviously isn’t capable of accommodating your vision.

Four, and this is personal opinion but reflects a lot of the community’s opinion, roll back the new gear tier, leaving exotic stats as the top. You’re going to lose a lot of players if you don’t.

Five, consider moving the entrance to Fractal of the Mists away from Lion’s Arch.
Thanks to dungeon runners, few will ever be able to access the Lion’s Arch of their home server reliably ever again. Move the portal to Southsun Cove or somewhere equally as accessible.

Overall, if I were to grade your work for this event, I would say that while your ambitions were big, you failed to deliver a satisfactory experience. Must try harder.

I agree with most of the feedback, and more especially with the points quoted here above.

To quickly summarize my personal experience of the Lost Shore events :

I tried and failed to join the event on Friday, crippled with lag as it was, so I stayed away from the events of the weekend only to discover that the third phase was rewarding precursors (for the lucky ones that didn’t get dc’d, got the good dice roll or didn’t get into a game breaking bug that is). I felt quite cheated with the bad communication about the events schedule and I’m sorry to have missed out the potentially fun part.

I’m an avid dungeon runner but my experience with the fractals has been quite atrocious so far. I tried to run it two on the weekend (once friday night at opening and later Saturday morning). The game crashed twice on entering the first fractal and I couldn’t join my team on re-launch. It was next to impossible to join a lvl 1 group later on the weekend, and the other instances were nearly deserted.

I also don’t understand the decision to put a put a dungeon entrance on the already crowded Lion Arch map. Finding a group on an overflow server is not fun, and the map chat was already quite crowded with other stuff. Putting a dungeon here only achieved to make it worst.

I’m also very concerned with the new tier of equipment and the mandatory grind to obtain it. I won’t expand on that, a lot of people already gave valid feedback on this point.

I really hope Anet will sort it out. I’ve been enjoying the game so far, but all the later additions seems to worsen the experience that adding to it. I can’t say I didn’t get a fair $60 share of enjoyment but I really hoped that this game would have lasted more than 3 months. I can only see it going downward from this point if Anet persists on this path.

Parthis.2091:

Mif.3471:

Parthis.2091:

I’m fine with one-time events. In fact I’d like to see more of them. I know it sucks if you can’t make it, but that’s life…

For some reason I doubt you’d have the same opinion if the event started at 5am GMT on a Monday.

Only you don’t know my circumstances, and you’re wrong.

The reality is there is no perfect time for everyone to do this stuff… so the choice becomes NEVER do this stuff, or do this stuff and accept that not everyone will be able to take part.

One-time events are preferable to never seeing the world change.

It’s not like those are the only 2 options though. One time events are fine, but they can be ran at different times for different time zones. Yes this means America gets to see content first, but at least everyone gets a more reasonable chance to join in.

I’m GMT and I managed to participate in all 3 evenings, but I think anyone much further east of me really was hard done by.

These things should have been thought about and implemented in advance of being released, it’s not like this is the first MMO and this sort of thing hasn’t been seen before, other MMOs manage it better. Same in terms of being able to hand out items to players when they do rollbacks etc, been done for years in other MMO, vital to the game when you have so many rollbacks and people being cheated out of hours, but it’s all reactionary and coming soon but not soon enough.

Parthis.2091:

Mif.3471:

Parthis.2091:

I’m fine with one-time events. In fact I’d like to see more of them. I know it sucks if you can’t make it, but that’s life…

For some reason I doubt you’d have the same opinion if the event started at 5am GMT on a Monday.

Only you don’t know my circumstances, and you’re wrong.

The reality is there is no perfect time for everyone to do this stuff… so the choice becomes NEVER do this stuff, or do this stuff and accept that not everyone will be able to take part.

One-time events are preferable to never seeing the world change.

Okay, sure, but why on -earth- should those one-time events have guaranteed rewards worth ~30 gold and possible rewards worth up to 200 :T

fishladybot.3675:

Parthis.2091:

Mif.3471:

Parthis.2091:

I’m fine with one-time events. In fact I’d like to see more of them. I know it sucks if you can’t make it, but that’s life…

For some reason I doubt you’d have the same opinion if the event started at 5am GMT on a Monday.

Only you don’t know my circumstances, and you’re wrong.

The reality is there is no perfect time for everyone to do this stuff… so the choice becomes NEVER do this stuff, or do this stuff and accept that not everyone will be able to take part.

One-time events are preferable to never seeing the world change.

Okay, sure, but why on -earth- should those one-time events have guaranteed rewards worth ~30 gold and possible rewards worth up to 200 :T

“Half of the complaints are coming from people who didn’t get a pre-cursor and are feeling butthurt. Remove them from the loot tables.”

That was included in my original post. And I agree, they shouldn’t.

I am pretty surprised by their development team on this event. Overall I would rate this whole event about a 4/10 with all its problems and the design of the one time ending with decent rewards really makes me wonder whats wrong with them because its a horrible idea. Honestly, I thought they were a little smarter then that. Will wait and see what their response is today before I decide if I plan to continue with this game or not.

Parthis.2091:

fishladybot.3675:

Parthis.2091:

Mif.3471:

Parthis.2091:

I’m fine with one-time events. In fact I’d like to see more of them. I know it sucks if you can’t make it, but that’s life…

For some reason I doubt you’d have the same opinion if the event started at 5am GMT on a Monday.

Only you don’t know my circumstances, and you’re wrong.

The reality is there is no perfect time for everyone to do this stuff… so the choice becomes NEVER do this stuff, or do this stuff and accept that not everyone will be able to take part.

One-time events are preferable to never seeing the world change.

Okay, sure, but why on -earth- should those one-time events have guaranteed rewards worth ~30 gold and possible rewards worth up to 200 :T

“Half of the complaints are coming from people who didn’t get a pre-cursor and are feeling butthurt. Remove them from the loot tables.”

That was included in my original post. And I agree, they shouldn’t.

Half of the complaints are coming from the many, many people who didn’t get -anything- because they missed it by a few hours or, worse yet, were disconnected during the event

fishladybot.3675:

Okay, sure, but why on -earth- should those one-time events have guaranteed rewards worth ~30 gold and possible rewards worth up to 200 :T

Not guaranteed. Dying at the wrong time and having to WP caused the chest not to be there. Same for those getting disconnected.

But back on topic. Please, if it is not possible to arrange having things happen several times for all to have a chance to be involved (every 6 hours), at least schedule them for the weekend, not early Monday morning.

Sonoran.2874:

I am pretty surprised by their development team on this event. Overall I would rate this whole event about a 4/10 with all its problems and the design of the one time ending with decent rewards really makes me wonder whats wrong with them because its a horrible idea. Honestly, I thought they were a little smarter then that. Will wait and see what their response is today before I decide if I plan to continue with this game or not.

The decision to add pre-cursors to the loot table must have been down to the fact that they’re stupidly expensive to buy and they wanted to get more into the market.

It was a stupid and short sighted decision tbh. Cheapened the experience for all, devalued the efforts of some, made the loss even worse for those that couldn’t attend and caused frustration as you watched that guy who’s just turned up on an alt for his 2nd chest, or that guy who spent most of the fight dead because he’s kittene, loot 200+ gold from a chest while you work out what to do with a kitteny harpoon gun and a pair of exotic slippers.

Garambola.2461:

fishladybot.3675:

Okay, sure, but why on -earth- should those one-time events have guaranteed rewards worth ~30 gold and possible rewards worth up to 200 :T

Not guaranteed. Dying at the wrong time and having to WP caused the chest not to be there. Same for those getting disconnected.

But back on topic. Please, if it is not possible to arrange having things happen several times for all to have a chance to be involved (every 6 hours), at least schedule them for the weekend, not early Monday morning.

Guaranteed if you get the chest, yeah

That was handled pretty badly, too, surprising no one

We feel that everyone should have the ability to contribute no matter what time of the day it is. How we’ve came to this conclusion is that no player’s time is more valuable than another. Everyone has different off peak hours for whatever reason. Players should not be punished or unable to experience and view the same content as everyone else because they play at a different time. They too are paying customers.

Matt Witter hit the nail on the head with this quote (although not about one-time events) so should know exactly what people are upset about. I wonder if this is still Anets stance or if they will just flip-flop their feel for the game when it suits them.

Dravos.7218:

Parthis.2091:

Mif.3471:

Parthis.2091:

I’m fine with one-time events. In fact I’d like to see more of them. I know it sucks if you can’t make it, but that’s life…

For some reason I doubt you’d have the same opinion if the event started at 5am GMT on a Monday.

Only you don’t know my circumstances, and you’re wrong.

The reality is there is no perfect time for everyone to do this stuff… so the choice becomes NEVER do this stuff, or do this stuff and accept that not everyone will be able to take part.

One-time events are preferable to never seeing the world change.

It’s not like those are the only 2 options though. One time events are fine, but they can be ran at different times for different time zones. Yes this means America gets to see content first, but at least everyone gets a more reasonable chance to join in.

I’m GMT and I managed to participate in all 3 evenings, but I think anyone much further east of me really was hard done by.

These things should have been thought about and implemented in advance of being released, it’s not like this is the first MMO and this sort of thing hasn’t been seen before, other MMOs manage it better. Same in terms of being able to hand out items to players when they do rollbacks etc, been done for years in other MMO, vital to the game when you have so many rollbacks and people being cheated out of hours, but it’s all reactionary and coming soon but not soon enough.

Except that in this case, having them happen one time is the ONLY way they make sense.

Unless you have a good in-world explanation for how a lighthouse can be destroyed, re-built, and destroyed again twelve times in a day? Or how about the massive amounts of destruction that were necessary to drive the ancient karka back into his lair?

Face it, sometimes having something happen ONCE is the only way it’s going to make sense. You can rationalize it as being all about the players and maybe that’s fair to say, but you can’t possibly rationalize it from any sort of in-the-world sense. And that’s precisely why they’re doing one-time events in the first place: to make changes to the world that people can witness and say “I was there”.

You’re not always going to be present when one-time events happen in real life, I don’t know why you’d insist on always being able to show up for one-time events in a fantasy world either. What, because it’s fantasy doesn’t mean it has to be realistic? One of the few things going for this game still is its realistic and life-like world.

It’s also one of the only promises in their Manifesto that I’ve seen them sticking to: a world that changes based on the players, and STAYS changed rather than the big bad boss respawning every hour. I wouldn’t ask them to change this because I’d be asking them to do precisely what every other MMO does, and they’re already getting too similar to other MMOs for my tastes.

Xilo.9567:

One time events make the world feel alive. Paying customer? There is more than 60$ of entertainment value in the game w/o the one time events.

I agree. Please have one time events in the future

[Edited by CC: Caps-lock format removed]

@Mufflarn
Free content update? Please I have never seen an MMO do a “massive” content update that fast unless the game release was unfinished/rushed like most F2P games that are just translated over from their Asian counter-parts.

3-months in had to add new area/dungeon? Seems like they know that the majority of their player base is bored as hell and they are trying to keep them interested. But if they are slipping up major points in the content update, (even if the Fractals of the Mists is kitten good) that is all the player base is going to know/care about.

OT:
I myself hit 80 within a few a weeks and was wondering what to do next. Dungeons? Okay but once you figure out how to speed run through them… ZzZzZzZ. Make a new character? Why I like the one I have now. Do jump puzzles… all of them completed before I hit 80 looool. Get legendary weapons. They look stupid for my build. Currently I am playing just to get my character to look nice. Even then Medium armors are shafted because 85% of it is emo trench coats. Boring. Spvp/WvW. Casual hop on for an hour or two just to do it for fun. Gets boring after a while.

Well Kazy i wouldn’t say that this was a “Massive” content update, they added a small new area that barely contains anything at all and a dungeon.

If you didn’t know this Arenanet have a dedicated team which only works on content updates like these and no it isn’t the same team that creates the Halloween event and other holiday events. If this team has been working on this since launch it is indeed possible for them to develop an update this size during this time.

And so what if they developed it prerelease we still knew exactly which areas, dungeons etc. we were going to get when we bought the game for 60 dollar and we knew that there wouldn’t be something called the lost shores. They could have charged 10 bucks for this update, just saying.

So yea that argument is still invalid.

I would like to add some things too to this on my view of it.

The first part of the event:
Sitting in Lion’s Arch waiting for kraka attacks. Ok, then we had massive lag, this was to be expected. However, because the npc to which you had to turn in the shells was an asura, she layed hidden under some charr and norn players, and sometimes she was invisible for good because of lag and rendering.
Then the treasure hunt. You went on and first looked at debris, then went to Blingg who was spamming his speech, and Tyrone who was also spamming his, it was a massive spam of the chat from the npcs there which was annoying as hell.
On my server, Noll was bugged. He wasn’t even there in first day, there was a mass of people waiting for him but he was nowhere to be seen.
Besides this I understood there was another item hunt with some npcs for which you got a mail. Alas, one of my guildies got 10 of said mails while I got 0. If he hadn’t told me about it, I would never have known about it (unfortunately some of the npcs for this were also bugged…).
Besides this there was the fight kraka in random areas of the world thing. This wasn’t done properly, you should have turned on all the parts at once, like this it only made players move form Lion’s Arch to Caledorn Forest, and bring the lag there and so on.
No, one suggestion is to not fill one area with the only event happening at that time. it’s understandable for the opening to be somewhere, but afterwards jamming all players somewhere is not ok due to lag many will get.
During the night we got a mini-patch probably to fix bugs. Went to see Noll again, now he was there… but still bugged, sitting on the floor for 30 min not talking to you, after that I got bored and left.

Second part of the event:
This was the worst of the lot.
The decision to let the event start at different times on different servers was horrible. I was on an overflow and stood 45 min for the catapult to be built while people on most other servers had already gone to the island to check out the stuff there. I understood there was a push event there too… but since I was sitting in Lion’s Arch still, I missed it. Until the battle actually started out there were only a handfull of us left anymore. We killed some krakas then the big boss came but… we ran to him and he jumped off the cliff. Really? I don’t even know what that catapult was for, it was never used.

The dungeon I went a bit with a guildie, alas, since not level 80 truly I couldn’t kill mobs so can’t give any input on that.
In the morning after I went and Noll had finally been fixed so managed to finish that quest (though I still have no clue what the soggy bag and other map fragments do?)

Part three of the event:
This was the best part of the lot.
You finally fixed some bugs. However, some people didn’t get the mail t where the boat to new zone was. I got it but many did not.
I went to the island a few hours before the battle to check it out. It looks … unfinished.
It looks amazing visually, it has some events but… that’s it. There’s no map completion, no vistas, no hearts, nothing. I really think some hearts should be added because it makes people have something to do while events are still not kicking off.
The jumping puzzles were nice. Found the easy one, failed at hard one but I liked them both. However the island itself looks like it’s missing stuff.

So anyway, event started, and fight the kraka, up and down, and up again. Then go out and find the big one. First criticism here, two reinforcement phases were too much. It made that part of the battle feel boring, seriously. One reinforcement phase was ok, two was too much, if anything I’d have kept the second reinforcement and scrapped the first, for the second also had those mortars that kept it fun since if you got bored of krakas you could bombard them from afar. The ending of the event was truly amazing indeed, killing that ugly kraka. Would have been amazing though if we would have fought each of its limb or something, like the first boss you fight, sort of target weak spots.

Had to write a second reply since the suggestions didn’t fit in one reply, sorry.

Overall, the event was full of bugs though, and this is the main thing that ruined it.
I know I’m just a random person playing your game, but I will advice two things:
1. Let the event run longer. Some people didn’t have time to sit now and check it out, better next time let each phase run for 3-4 days at least with it happening over and over again so people can experience it. You could make it so the last battle only gives rewards one time per account so that you don’t get people getting it multiple times.
2. Iron out at least the major bugs. Essential npcs and similar stuff need to be fixed before it’s put live, especially since it’s a one time event. I’d rather have waited 1 more month for this patch but have it less buggy. For obvious reasons.
3. Put some reasons to return to kraka island, at least for exploration if nothing else. Otherwise people will explore it once, do the puzzles and never return and it’s sad, because you clearly worked a lot on it and it looks awesome but there’s not much to do.

I think what anet needs to do is take a step back and remember their initial manifesto
the first thing once I got to know what happened was that and this exact quote by Matt Witter being a WvW regulars

It feels like since release anet is going downhill and if they don’t even realize this, it seems like ‘success’ has made them arrogant and that’s even more reason to go back to their manifesto. If you have forgotten you ever made them, here’s to make you remember http://www.arena.net/blog/guild-wars-2-design-manifesto

It’s time to make MMORPGs more social
MMOs are social games. So why do they sometimes seem to work so hard to punish you <omitted the rest>
that’s what you said remember?

having said that, if Matt was involved in this whole mess, whatever happened to your statement before? If he wasn’t involved, dear anet, please promote this guy or involve him in any other events you’re planning to have in the future. seriously.

I understand why you might feel one-time event is a good thing. but why ‘punish’ those that are on the other side of the planet?

I’m very very dissapointed with this whole thing
thanks you so much anet for making me feel like crap. again.

The fractals are great. But you can’t always find the time or friends to do an instance.

As for the event, I guess I once again have nothing to do most of the time but wait for Claw of Jormag to spawn.

Wasn’t this supposed to be a content patch?

Here is my feedback:
i player all of the events, the first one, with the karka attack, awesome idea and implementation, but frustrating lag even on the normal server (not overflow), me and my friends had like 5 frame for second. Arenanet should know how much player are going to play in one server, and should make their count BEFORE the acutal Event.
The second and third event i liked them a lot, very less lag, but the two fase of destroying reinforcement are too overpowered, not only some of them you have to kill’em twice (one for the armor and one for the actual monster) but are so powerful and so many that we got likely wiped out in a couple of minutes, with some survivor struggling by the wood bridge and can’t resurrect anyone because of the massive army of karka.
The ancient karka battle is very very fun, but the feeling i would never ever battle it again is a little depressing.

Now for the rewards… i like the idea of pets and special skins, but the randomness and rarity for them are too much frustrating i don’t know i’m gonna play for some time. i opened and crafter like 40-45 consortium chests looking for Mini Karka and the highest drop i had was a couple of shark’s thoot axes, and i lost all (i repeat ALL) of my hard earned money doing dungeon and WvW.
Don’t misunderstanding, i know that these things are rare and all, but i’d like to have some other way to obtain it without spending a lot of money (real and virtual) for only a chance. I’d like to be sure to have some thing (i’m speaking about mini Karka for myself, but this concept can be applied to any item) for example crafting in the mystic forge, i don’t care about materials, they may be rare or long to farm, but when i mix’em together i’m sure to drop what i want.
How it is now it seems to me a system that reward more luck than perseverance, and will be frustrating soon (for me and a couple of friends that couldn’t get the item they wanted) or later.

It would be perfect if these event mini-pet comes like Halloween ones, three for gems (500 are affordable with some farming) and one super-rare for mixing them togheter in Mystic Forge. In this example, i wouldn’t have to waste, for example 15 gold to get nothing but shoulder or water mask skins, i would have buyed gems and get what i wanted.

May be the frustrating of the moment speaking, but i don’t think i will play for a while, and most of it i will not even try to get next items, it would be just a waste of my in-game money and above all time.

Good play for other players

Thank you Arenanet for a great gaming weekend topped by a great time at the last event last night (for me in the UK). It was so much fun to play with so many other players all rushing around trying to help each other and complete the event. Even if you died that was always someone to ressurect you almost instantly. Certainly there was a lot of friendly appreciative chat after the ancient Karka was defeated.

I hope that Arenanet realise that 95% of the people had a great time it is just the 5% moaners that dominate the forums.

Thanks very much

Ramélie

Guys please, no more such things:
http://i.imgur.com/m50ww.jpg & http://i.imgur.com/kfSt0.jpg

Well, my feedback in another thread was destroyed by the merge. So I’ll go again.

Phase 1 was almost unplayable due to lag and went on too long IMO. The lack of any reward apart from the event reward (at least that I could see on my overflow) was a let down.

Phase 2 was a mess, on the overflow server I was on the ancient karka never appeared, the trebuchet was finished then… the boat became available. After a 30 or so minute build-up that was both confusing and a massive let down: people were reluctant to go to the new zone in case they missed something and reluctant to stay in case they missed something. In the end we went to the zone and joined the big push inland that again just stopped at Captain’s Retreat. People were unsure if it’d kick off again or if that was it.

Phase 3 was a lot more fun with a lot less lag but again went on too long (it was about 2 hours 40 minutes long, fine for the most part but the reinforcement phases were painful and bordered on tedious). The rewards here were nice. I especially like the 20 slot bag, it’s something nice that’s not going to overpower any character and is something I’ll be keeping for the foreseeable future!

For the one-time nature of the events I have to ask, why are they one time events? Who is that for? Do your customers actually want these to be once-only events or to be accessible at other times? Personally, I would prefer they were accessible/repeatable throughout the event I suspect most of your players would agree (and almost certainly those who missed out on them would).

I can understand that you might want it to be this grand event that only occurs once so that the players have this feeling that they just have to be there or they’re missing out on something special but as you must know that just means that a lot of people miss out on the content and having content that everyone cannot experience seems to be a waste of effort. Fridays start event for example, must have been missed by most of your players on the North American servers.

Why not have the events repeat as they do in other MMOs (and as your own Dynamic events do in the game)? This would mean that more people get to see them and would even have made sense in the context of the invasion of Lion’s Arch, I was expecting this to turn Lion’s Arch into a warzone where you have this tug-of-war over the city, hourly attacks would make the threat more “real” instead they attacked once then retreated for the day. Nice of them.

An NPC/golem who could show the cutscenes people missed would also be a nice idea, some Asura widget, they’re clever people I’m sure they have some quantum temporal receivers that detect and record it.

Perhaps a better solution in general would be to have these kind of grand events repeat every hour or two in a special set of instance overflows for people who missed them? Have a story instance marker or NPC appear at the event start 15 minutes before the event begins and allow people to enter these instance overflows. That way the event occurs in the “real” world at the time it actually occurs but people who missed it are allowed to play through the “historical” event (through magic or the mists or whatever) after the fact.

For the parts of the event outside of the three set-pieces. Having them handled like the personal story, a sub-plot that you can tackle at your own pace, would be far better in my opinion (a few sub-plot gold story markers on the map instead of just the green ones would help flesh out the personal story line). For example, the “beat up NPCs for information” parts of the scavenger hunt should occur in separate story instance like your personal story does, this would be a far better experience than standing in a camp for five minutes waiting for the flurry of activity where an NPC is hammered to pieces and then you get a mail. You could have more detailed build up and allow the possibility of actually convincing the NPC to give you the information through talking rather than just beating it out of them. It would also hopefully prevent the reoccurrence of the stuck NPC bugs.

Please don’t cram so much missable content into such a short time frame again. For a lot of your players it is a strain to make it to everything which for permanently missable content means we feel like we’re missing out.

Finally, why isn’t the new zone a full zone? No Skill Challenges, no Vistas, just a scattering of POIs?

I had no problems with the one-time event, but i can see how these kind of events can be a real problem to a LOT of people, Anet must start thinking about using instances for these kind of events, the massive amount of people in the map and the fixed hour when it started made this event a total mess. Turn them into instances with a fixed amount of players (a number between 20 and 50) allowed, that cannot be repeated once finished, and everything would be fine.

I have to second this, i feel so bad for ANET making all this cool stuff for us for free, and mostly receiving bad feedback. Usually people who enjoy stuff don’t take the time to give feedback, its the moaners that do. ( just for the record, people who didn’t get loot after 2.5 hours of work i do feel sorry for you, and hopefully you will be compensated. )
I thoroughly enjoyed the whole weekend, ( yes there were a few snags, the bugs, the lag.. ) but that didn’t take away any of my enjoyment. Everything about the Ancient Karka fight was epic, Love the lost shores… ( would like to see a few more things to do there though it feels a bit empty at the moment. )
Anyway just wanted ANET to know that not all of their customers are unhappy. I love GW2 and will be with you for the long haul.
<3

" We have …… ect ect ect…. solution in place.
Thank you, and we apologize that you were unable to claim your rewards. "

Hmmmm…. Thnx for apologizing to the fact that people were unable to claim their rewards at the end…

But where is the apology for this whole event ?
I mean, seriously, is A-net only sorry that people couldn’t claim their reward at the end of this horrible event ? Didn’t they read all those post about how crappy people think this event was?
This one time event was so poorly implemented, realy, it brings tears to my eyes…

And then : what about the people who couldn’t play at all on sunday ? Is A-net looking for a soIution for these players too ?
I tried to skip this whole event by leveling up further with some characters, doing some personal story bits, but I got DC-ed every 15-20 minutes, had lagg all through the afternoon and evening, including some random freeze-ups too…
( no, my internetconnection was fine before this event, and yes, my computer is up to date, as it was before this event started )

So, to cut a long story short :
We need apologies for this entire event-weekend due to the fact that is was so crappy.
We need apologies for all the DC’s and the poor FPS’ due to ( again ) poor server capacity management ( same thing happend during the launchdate ).
And we need overall compensation for this bad event-weekend, not only for people who participated in the event, but also for the rest of the community who tried to skip it.

Regards
The Dark One

I logged in for the final phase of the Lost Shores event, only to be faced with the same connectivity issues we had at the beginning; it was virtually impossible to play, and certainly not an enjoyable experience. After being killed by something invisible to my high-latency connection, I gave up and logged out, hoping that perhaps I’d get a chance to get involved later, when things had calmed down. It appears that I’ll have no such luck though.

I think that after the success of the Halloween event, our expectations were high. Lost Shores was highly anticipated because ArenaNet had demonstrated they knew how to present time-limited PvE events in a way which were fair and accessible to everyone. What was delivered, was a complete shambles in comparison. Servers unable to cope, bugs blocking progress even after patches were applied, and lacklustre rewards (unless you happened to be lucky enough to find a stable shard at the right time during a two-hour timeslot on one specific day, managed to maintain a connection throughout, and bothered to stay glued to the screen during what I hear was a pretty boring finale). I just hope that anyone playing the game for the first time due to the impeccably-timed free trial did not think the Lost Shores event was an accurate portrayal of how good things can be, because if that was my first impression, I’d have written the game off.

I’ll not ask for an opportunity to obtain the “mad loot” I missed out on, but I will ask that ArenaNet reconsider how they present these events to their players in the future.

We’re paying customers? Well yes, we bought the game, but I’ve already got my money’s worth before this content update, and I’m not paying a subscription.

As for the suggestion above of staggering the final event, wouldn’t work through staggering by server, since there are only 2 server locations. Sure the oceanic players have adopted certain servers, but since their are no official designation you’d still get upset players who had to miss out.

GW1 had 3 hourly repeats for events, though that works better when the event only lasts 30 minutes at a time. Not so straight forward when the event takes 2 hours + to complete
I don’t think there is a straight forward solution and Anet are going to upset some people no matter what option they choose. They chose a time where the most number of players are on at any one time.

Re Fractals for the love of good allow players who disconnect to rejoin their party in the fractal. My first time in and a party member disconnected twice. We spent 2.5 horus without managing to progress because of that.

The content that I saw and was able to play was a lot of fun! Get the technical difficulties worked out, but content-wise, I thought it was imaginative and pretty cool! Specifically, opening up a new map has a lot of possibilities and the scenery, as is the new standard, was fantastic. The Karka is a new toughie that’s exciting to fight (not sure if I’ll be able to take down even one of the small one’s alone, though). And the whole Consortium storyline was pretty good – going all over to solve the riddles was entertaining. As I said, get the technical snags worked out and keep plugging along with this kind of content – you got the best game on the market right now!

I very much enjoyed the story of the final event (actually I enjoyed the story of the whole weekend) but the implementation was less than ideal. For future events I really hope that:

(a) Overflow limits will be reduced (along with mob numbers) as it seems that anyone not running a state-of-the-art PC enjoyed more of a slideshow last night than the immersive experience I’m sure it was intended to be.

(b) Events will never again be one-time only but will be cycled over a finite period. By all means limit participation to once per account but it seems a terrible shame that players from different timezones to us fortunate folks in Europe and North America miss out on the experience.

© Loot is given as tokens that can be exchanged for account-bound items of choice. I hate RNG with a passion and it seems “off” that loot results were so varied. As it happens I was quite (though not very ) lucky and have relatively few complaints from a personal point of view but I feel the pain of people who came away with disappointing loot seeing others who are linking their shiny precursors. I don’t begrudge anyone their loot, I just wish the distribution were not random.

I’m also a paying customer and I like one time events.

I loved it too. Let’s keep this thread nice and on target; if you’re with it, post, if not drop your thoughts into one of the less positive threads.

I loved it. More one-time events please, just with better pacing.

tyty

Why only ppl who gets 1 or 2 pre-cursors seing that event was good ?

Going to keep mine short as there are plenty of walls of text here:

New Dungeon – decent fun, for PvE.
New Island – All well and good.
New PvP map – Good times..
New gear treadmill that goes against the design manifesto? Disgusting.

And especially horrible, unfair and frustrating:

One time only event chains with rewards that range from 20g – 200g not OK by anyones account. At least run this event every few hours, and just lock people’s account from looting the chest at the end. I agree the precursor chances where too high but I wouldn’t complain if I got to do the bloody event at ALL. The Bag and free exotics alone where more than enough and due to being Australian and having to work, I’ve missed out pretty much guaranteed high value, free loot with a chance to instantly become rich.

If you continue to kitten on everyone who can’t play outside of US High Peak (and even those family men/women with commitments), things are not looking good.

Derian.4703:

Why only ppl who gets 1 or 2 pre-cursors seing that event was good ?

I didn’t get a pre-cursor.

I thought this event was, on the whole, good.

If you’re playing solely for rewards then you’re doing it wrong.

/Signed

Come on Anet, what the hell, dropping precursors?….
Long story short couldnt attend this weekends one time event, i thought yeh i wont miss out as the area is perminent, but then reading posts and speaking to people you dropped precursors, some people even got 2? Im all for 1 time events, i accept that real life gets in the way, but what youve essentially done is gone, heres a chance of getting on of the most expensive (…real terms about £400 when converting gems etc) weapons for sitting around for 3 hours…..and oh we wont be repeating for those who have other commitments, tough luck but were getting money from you loosers and we dont actually care about you

come on……

Nice to see threads like these in the midst of all the chaos !

Me personally , I had an amazing time in the event , so much fun and the southsun cove was delightful , loved the scenery and the way it was designed (minus those gigantic crab dudes :S).Found myself getting distracted when I see the coral and ponds :P
Skipping Stones jumping puzzle was SO awesome , took me a few hours to finally get it to the top but was so happy I did it
The only minor disappointment was DCing during the finale and the major lag-fest.

Thank you ANet and looking forward to more (can we have GW1 style finales :P?)

I would like to thank Anet for everything. There are 2 many ragers out there and it is funny to see them going , but at the end you did very nice job and I hope we will get some more stuff like this.

Only remark is the culling bug and not getting a meteorshower but 10 karkas on my head :P, but I know you are allready trying to fix that problem, so keep up the spirit, there are still a lot of people who love you for what you have done and what you will do.

Thanks

Ramelie.6950:

Thank you Arenanet for a great gaming weekend topped by a great time at the last event last night (for me in the UK). It was so much fun to play with so many other players all rushing around trying to help each other and complete the event. Even if you died that was always someone to ressurect you almost instantly. Certainly there was a lot of friendly appreciative chat after the ancient Karka was defeated.

I hope that Arenanet realise that 95% of the people had a great time it is just the 5% moaners that dominate the forums.

Thanks very much

Ramélie

LOL that’s one selfish player who succeeded to not crash and finish the event and get the rewards.
Please only 4-5 people are posting here and happy with that, you have to see the other posts where hundreds of people are complaining.
and also there is a difference between moaning and complaining so let’s use the correct term.

and this game is not only about you, it’s about all the community that plays it

I hate that event and I hate the way Arena made that event.
Period.

Yeah I enjoyed it, it was a lot of fun “raiding” the Ancient Karka nest with a big PCG zerg, all on Mumble.

No, I didn’t get a pre-cursor. I got exotics worth 2g.

fishladybot.3675:

Okay, sure, but why on -earth- should those one-time events have guaranteed rewards worth ~30 gold and possible rewards worth up to 200 :T

You guys are blowing those rewards way out of proportion. Very few people got those rewards. No one in my group got anything worth more than 20 silver. They were definitely not guaranteed.

That event should have had them guaranteed though. It took way too long. I find it hilarious people are complaining they missed it. The people who did the event are complaining they were in it.