Guild Wars 2

So they’re managing a reimbursement of sorts for people that were culled from the servers or who lagged out during the event. What about the people who did the first two phases but couldn’t get on for the money phase? I did everything asked of all the people who did these events except for the last phase. Maybe even just the 20-slot bag as a ‘thanks for participating’?

It puts me off that this event was so bugged in the first place. Perhaps the one-time event thing shouldn’t be limited to a one time zone. As others have said here, make it instanced to alleviate lag and have it run for more than just those who can make it on at one particular time. It’s quite obvious that Arenanet’s GW2 servers can’t handle the load of hundreds of thousands of people and have smooth server-lag-free gameplay, so I believe the instancing thing has some merit.

The other way they could make up for it is have a redux of the entire event. This makes it not so much one-time only, but at this point, who really cares. You have so many more annoyed people that couldn’t finish the event for one reason or another, a redux (with plenty of warning) would be a fine idea.

Well here’s my feedback for the whole thing:

Phase 1: Missed the cutscene because it took so long to log in, roughly 5+ minutes, normally takes me about 10 seconds. I watched the video online, not all that impressive. The event itself, would have been fine, except the server lag was so unbearable that I almost logged off. When I use an ability and it takes, I think the longest I counted was 6-7 seconds, or doesn’t work at all… You have a pretty big problem.

The investigation quests, they were perfectly fine and fun, aside from all the npc’s being bugged and people not being able to finish this chain or having to wait until a server reset. (Bugged npc’s like this are becoming WAY too common.) Aside from that I would have liked to see more “quests” pertaining to the event. As for rebuilding the light house, nice touch but not worth doing in the long run.

Phase 2: No one knew where to go until the karka spawned in LA and even then, as usual with most events we had lag issues, though not as bad as phase 1. We did however run into the problem of the karka walking too far up the beach and becoming unkillable which was very disappointing. I eventually just went to the boat to go to the new map.

The phase 2 map event, while relatively short, was fun as well as finding the jumping puzzles and sticking around for the various events. However, I feel phase 2 in general lacked any form of “questing” like we had in phase 1 to gather the map pieces.

Phase 3:First off, the rewards for this phase were great, throwing precursors into the mix though I’m not sure I agree with but honestly I’m not getting into that. The actual event itself though, while it started out as fun and difficult, quickly became boring and dull, after the first hour myself and everyone else that was around me was complaining about the length of time to do the ancient karka event. If you’re going to put an event into the game, it can be lengthy but you can’t have something go on for multiple hours doing the exact same thing over and over.

Dungeon: The new dungeon is awesome, I’ve only ran across one “bug” in that my party and I all had our games crash on one of the paths making us have to completely restart (I’m sure you can understand why this is not acceptable) But on the whole it’s great and the ascended gear is good.

Now the biggest complaint out of everything I experienced and it’s not even a complaint about me really. Is knowing that you have major lag issues, crashes and bugs during “one time events” why in the world would you have a free trial during one. I understand you want to bring new players in to experience something awesome and coerce them into buying the game, but people that my guild knew that were on the trial actually decided NOT to buy the game because of all the problems with these events. I myself, having bought the game.. would never buy this game if I had of experienced these events while on the trial. It honestly makes me question your intelligence a bit and I mean that in the nicest way possible.

my feedback

I am not considering the bugs, as things can go wrong no matter what.

Great event: there was content for everyone, both casual players (login randomly and do something then logout and bye) and hardcore ones (investigation, gathering of stuff, battles here and there, and some nice hints of plots that may develop in the future..). Southsun Cove scenario is too beautiful (somehow I understand the people sunbathing on the beach there… regardless of Karka)
The final battle: it was epic, dramatic, and sometimes I asked myself if we were going to succeed. That’s how war is. Thanks also for having the battle last long enough for me to join even if I was one hour later (RL stuff), that was a nice idea to widen the time frame

dralou.7239:

The new map: is gorgeous

So true. The landscape was inspired by Pamukkale (Turkey), which I visited a few years ago. It was a beautiful touch, and a nice trip down memory lane for me.

http://wikitravel.org/en/Pamukkale

Grevender.9235:

Southsun Cove scenario is too beautiful (somehow I understand the people sunbathing on the beach there… regardless of Karka)

If you search for Pamukkale on Google Images, you’ll find people sunbathing there.

What I would prefer to see is the event occurring only once for each player, but with a window of opportunity (say 24 hours) where players can choose to participate in the event. So you could get some of that “world-changing, one-time event” feel while making the event more conveniently accessible to a larger portion of the playerbase.

Of course to do this, you’d probably have to instance the event. But with the horrible culling issues and lag most of us experienced, I’m not really seeing a negative there.

I agree with that, however it shouldnt be instanced. Why not reset the Event every 1/2/3hours[or whatever matches] like Tequatl, for 24hours , and an account-bound chest with you can loot only one time that day.

That would solve ALL problems. No extreme horrible lags because it shares the traffic over the timezones, no high-spikes (okay maybe in the first round still, but if it is to laggy, you can come later back on the next round).

And it has still a one time feeling that changes the world of tyria forever!

At the behest other players, I’m going to post this here:

I had sooo many problems with this event…

1. The bugs and the server woes. At this point they’re just unacceptable. The game’s been absolutely riddled with bugs since launch (Orr was little more than a pile of endless bugged events back then), so for new content to be equally bug-filled is awful on so many levels.

2. The final event was incredibly tedious. Most of the people I was with went half-afk out of sheer boredom simply because we spent so much time wailing on massive damage sponges. Not cool.

3. The rewards were over-the-top and excessively random (included a chance for precursors, exotics worth 50-100x regular exotics, to drop in the chest) on the final day. The first two days had typically underwhelming rewards. As someone else put it, someone who put in several hours grinding through the event could see two worthless exotics while someone who shows up at the last minute can get two precursors. Completely unfair. It was particularly jarring as every single event prior did not have such incredibly valuable rewards. Some warning would have been nice, but you still have to deal with…

4. Many, MANY players simply could not attend the event because of the time frame. As far as I’m concerned, the “one-time” part adds pretty much nothing to the event. I felt no great joy from the fact that the event would never show up again – unless you count the joy that comes with finally downing an incredibly tedious bag of HP. At the very least, they should run the event multiple times over the 24-hour period to ensure everyone gets a chance.

The only thing I liked about this event were the new monsters (aside from the part where they’re blatantly overpowered) and the actual look of the new area, which may be the most beautiful of all the zones released so far… but those parts are permanent, and have pretty much nothing to do with how the event itself was executed. The whole thing just leaves a really sour note in my mouth.

To be completely honest, they could have just released a great big, long, in-game cutscene and it would have been considerably more enjoyable than what we actually had. It’s not like player actions actually affected the outcome in any measurable way.

IMO, if this is the course Anet wants to take GW2; so be it. But, Anet is going to have to step up and go with it.
What is going to be needed forward is:

Group/Party Voice chat IN the game.
A LFG Dungeon finder that allows players to queue up and set parameter for what they are looking for and what depth (fractals) they are able to get to or what path (other dungeons) they are looking for.
And finally push in Guesting to make it easier to find matches within the LFG tool.

Without these tools at hand; grouping is a pita. Spamming LFG for ten minutes then go through the “Application Process” of depth/path and gear checks is ridiculous… and the same is true for building a group. Finally, once in a group; one has to then climb into a 3rd party voice chat that varies from group to group.

I’m going to repost my comment from another place because it’s the best way I could explain what I’d like to see from one-time events in the future:

I’d rather not see one per month just for the sake of having them, honestly. I do like them, but I don’t want them to become a focus of the game. I just like that they’re something ArenaNet’s willing to do, more as an indication that they don’t mind changing the world and anything could happen than because I’m dying to say I was there to whack at a giant crab for two hours.

I’d like them to take a long, hard look at where they really fit; the rarity of this kind of thing is likely to contribute to how special it feels, and I think it should be saved for truly important, world-changing events. And not world-changing as in, “We opened up a new zone! Come check it out!” If you’re gonna kill off a major NPC or drastically change an existing area or marry off Jennah and Logan, then THAT’S the sort of thing I’d expect a one-time event for.

In short, I expected them to be for lore-important stuff. Destroying the lighthouse in LA was kind of neat, and really if the whole one-time event had been the karka emerging, rampaging, and then GTFOing, that would have been pretty cool.

I think it might help if you don’t announce this stuff when it happens, and just have it happen organically. That would remove the need to have it be super activity-based, and if people miss it all they’re missing is what caused the lighthouse to be destroyed or whatever. Hinting that something’s going to happen (as opposed to insisting we don’t want to miss it, which only stokes expectations that it had better be worth setting aside time for), sure—I liked knowing that I should keep an eye out in LA so I could be there when Mad King Thorn broke the fountain—and there were clear visual cues that something creepy was up with the fountain far in advance, which was awesome when players just naturally noticed it. But the reward for being there when it happens should be having a story to tell, and unless there’s a really cool idea for attaching an activity to it I think one-time events are most valuable as an indication of new permanent content.

As an example, prior to the release of Final Fantasy XI’s Chains of Promathia expansion, players logged in to find that some of the teleport crystals at the crags of Holla, Dem, and Mea had shattered. This was a big deal because people saw the crags every day and they were a centerpiece of gameplay, so just the simple fact that something had happened to them fired up speculation to a fever pitch. It really felt like things were changing in the world, and I still remember the day we ran all over the map doing nothing but looking for more hints to what was coming, thrilled to death when we found them.

Edit: And it’s not that I’d only want to see one-time events for major things, period, but the “epicness” and level of player involvement required should correspond to how important things are to the world at large. If the whole thing with the karka emerging and players having to fight off the leader at the island had been a one-shot thing, entirely, with the goal of unlocking the area for people to explore, that would have been great. Instead of spanning a weekend, really the entire thing could have been done in a couple of hours over Saturday or Sunday. Karka emerge, attack LA, we chase them to the new island and hunt down the Ancient Karka, kill that, ta-da! Enjoy your new zone.

Events: Too much lag but good, it need more spreed in the map.

Fractal: Fun, great dungeon but the difficulty level need be based in account, or that if a party member have lvl 15 for example and the rest of the party lvl 7-6-10 can enter in lvl 15. Right now to me the lvl system only make hard to get group or cant play with friends if they not have enough lvl.

Result the grind win.

Ascend Items: Worst thing to happen GW saga in 8 years to me, if you cant rollback after all the fedback of the forum, at least stop here.

Since you guys said that the feed backs were “lost”, so here it is again.

One time event, what can I say, lag lag and more lag, once I DCed I didn’t get the chest, what a great event!

Fractal instances, only serves as gear check contents, didn’t like the idea one bit.

New “gear progression initiative”, well since I was told, sold and advertised a different product, I can honestly tell you that you have lost my trust in your company and I will never spend another penny in any of your future products, and neither will I speak good of your company shall anyone asks.

That will be all.

I feel like there was no continuity between the scavenger hunt portion of the event and downing the Ancient Karka. The mechanic could have been tuned to make use of the giant laser and trebuchet that the npc’s were just lounging around. The reinforcement phase was definitely boring and could have been made more interesting by using siege to break off pieces of the Ancient Karka’s armor or some actual game mechanic that required thought.

I feel the addition of precursors was innovative and a nice bonus for those that were able to get them. In the future perhaps a set gold reward could come from the chest if you didn’t get an exotic. One or the other, not both. I also agree the one time event should occur one time, per character.

Overall I feel that the event was positive, but that the new continent is underutilized and boring in its current state.

GonzoNeo.4965:

Ascend Items: Worst thing to happen GW saga in 8 years to me, if you cant rollback after all the fedback of the forum, at least stop here.

I would be satisfied if the only Ascended items with higher stats were backpieces, although if they bumped the stats down to be on par with Exotics they’d still be worth crafting for the cool quiver/book appearances and infusion slots.

Suggestions for improvement:

1. Play to your strengths, don’t run head on into your weaknesses: If technical issues are causing problems with culling, limit the scale of the encounters or the number of people allowed in them. I also know that before launch, developers stated that the optimal gameplay experience was about than 5-15 players, so I’m not sure why you pack players into zones.

2. Consider making many One Time events more like multiplayer “personal story” events that exist only for that weekend or that day. I don’t know what it will do to your server technology, but if you’re going to need overflows to handle the population anyway, and you already create instances of zones for personal story missions (facsimiles of Lion’s Arch or any other zone for story steps that take place there) just put groups of 20 or so people into their own personal “overflow” mission for the 1 time event, much like you do when you create spvp instances, parcel people out to overflows, put people into the Mad King’s Labyrinth, or put 5 people into a dungeon.

This allows them to be 1 time only events, lets people still complete them at their leisure instead of hunting around for an overflow that still has the event running, and would take care of post-event problems, like trying to get people their loot if they DC from the karka battle. If you DC during a personal story step, you can always try again.

This probably wouldn’t work for events where you’re destroying the lighthouse, but I think the Ancient Karka battle and the “taming the island” on saturday would work great like that, just make sure that the first time you go to that area on the day of the 1 time event puts you into the “one time event” personal story. Even put one of those green personal story stars onto the map if you need to.

3. Bugged NPCs. This also happened during launch, where Dynamic Events bugged because people were just interracting with objects so often or glitching the NPCs meaning that they would be broken for a few days to a week until you reset the servers. This will be a big problem in One Time Events (with the downside being that if they’re bugged, the event themselves will shortly go away) so design accordingly. I think you changed some of the consortium npcs to put them on a timer, and continue to do that or implement some other workaround in the future.

4. I’m not sure if you’re going to continue updating quests by mail, or if you’re doing that to combat some of the DE breaking bugs mentioned above, but it is a little disorienting, because nothing like that existed in the base game.

5. I enjoyed the event. I particularly liked the Arenanet player that went around rezzing people and fighting along with us. Half the time I wasn’t sure if he recognized the same problems I did, or was too busy laughing at how bad we were.

I have 2 ideas for future “one-time events”:

1) Considering that most people will go to the event, we can assume that a lot of other areas will be under-populated. You can help combat that lag and server load issues by merging all of these unused areas and having every server use the overflow for every area other than the event area. That way each server can devote as much of its time as possible to the event while the one server handles everything else. This would help prevent people on the same server from being split up as well as reducing the lag.

2) Instead of the event being “one-time per server”, make it “one-time per account”. Since an account can be logged in at one computer at a time it follows that an account can only participate in a one-time event like the Karka event with a single character. It wasn’t like you could really get on an alt and do it again (I know some people did this but I’m sure it wasn’t the intent). That’s my reasoning for “per account” instead of “per character”. I would do the “per account” by setting up an instance of the event much like a dungeon, however the number of people allowed would be, say, 100 people at a time (I’m thinking per server here btw). There would be scheduled start times based on the estimated completion time, such as 11am, 2pm, 5pm, 8pm (estimating 3 hours completion time). Of course some groups might take longer so be sure you can handle twice the max number of people. When the time for the next run comes around, anyone can enter but after the max number has entered no one else can. Managing the event like this would not only let players feel like they played a larger role in the event but it will also help ensure that everyone can participate and that there will be no lag/dc issues and that if there are any bugs then the dev team has a chance to fix and re-release the update before the next run starts.

Hey, just here to give you guys a bit more of my two sense. My initial feedback mentioned the obvious bugs and what not that had hindered the events fluidity. Something I did not mention was the new dungeon, the fractals of the mist; this is because I had only yet completed lvl one. Now that I have experienced a number of the different mini dungeons I have formed an opinion. The new dungeon is amazing, the visuals are grand and the fights are exciting. The puzzles within the dungeon are difficult but once they are completed you feel closer to your party members. The vertical nature of some of the dungeons is one of the most enjoyable parts. I loved freeing that giant searing man from his mountainside prison. All in all the dungeon makes up for a lot of the mishaps of the event and I do not want it to seem unappreciated. You guys are trying at something difficult, these constant events, and I understand it is risky when it comes to stability. I know WoW kept to the same halloween event for near a decade because the feared the consequences of changing it. I hope what happened during this event showed you guys areas of content creation that need a closer look and hope that though this content update had its flawed the trial and error nature of your project improves because of it. Good luck Arena net, I’m rooting for you.

The overall event was great.
Making it a goal to create world altering events makes the universe feel like it’s alive and breathing.
However it wasn’t perfect. I felt like it came with a concerning amount of bugs which may be an indication of moving content along too quickly.
The one time event was awesome in theory but in practice it didn’t alter the world in a significant enough way, in my opinion, to make it worth being a one time deal. The frustrating it brought many friends was unfortunate.

I really enjoyed the rewards it’s helped balance out the economy by lowering the price of precursors for those who have been saving and giving money to those who sold precursors thus allowing them to distribute the money in the market. Overall I’ve seen a very positive effect from this.

Sparknotes:
One time events should only happen if they are actually going to permanently impact the world in a meaningful way
Named exotic and precursor reward has been healthy for the economy

If you guys are still getting through a lot of these, wow. Kudos.

My thoughts are that a one time event is cool, but in the end disallowed a lot of people to participate for various reasons in real life, whether that just be their time zone or obligations like work, etc. It seems to go against the whole idea of rewarding everyone with this game. I would have preferred that the event ran 3 times that day, or once a day for a couple of days, but having a limit set that each account can only access the chest/reward once. We still get to participate, it can still be something that only happened once in the world lore-wise, etc. Or if the game’s system can manage it, do it as an instanced thing that we can only complete once, but make it a larger group than 5, just for these special events. (I don’t want to try and organize 20 people for a dungeon EVER.) I don’t know, just my thoughts.

I enjoyed the new area, and the new stat combo for armor. More items with later updates that gave you other stat possibilities would be great and allow for some more build combos, which would be awesome.

Oh, also, as for bugs, it’s annoying, but I mean, it’s your second time rolling out new stuff, it can take a few times to get the wrinkles ironed out, just keep up the good work with that. Events in GW 1 had no issues, I know you guys can get this to roll content out just as well.

Lets see. I enjoyed the event very much despite the lag. Investigative quests are a great addition but better to do those over a week not two days as they were bugged and I never got to finish them. Which is a real shame, as I am missing the story now. And ANet really get rewards to those who crashed before getting to open the chest. Loved the new map. Love the karka for new enemies. But really, learn from this ANet, and I’ll be happy. Halloween was great. Lost Shores not as much. Maybe a week for the rest, and the kill the big baddie at the end as the one off?

oke… it`s 21 nov 22:33 in romania now.. and again i`m gonna ask… when us ( 1.100 ) players that reported not receiving any chest because of the disconnects, glitches, or client crashed.. ??? when we gonna have the chance of getting our self deserved precursor? if you can tell me this.. then i`m gonna say that it worth 2h of my time.. until then… IT DIDN’T worth the effort!

Should Ascended gear feedback go here now, since the original 10,000 post thread was deleted?

Ok full time nightshift worker part time parent.

I will try to keep this civil….

I have 800 hours on one character yes my beloved guardian. I was working that morning and when i come home from my 8 hour shift at 7am in the morning i have to take my son to school and then i get some sleep before i pick him up at 3pm and take him to his mothers.

As much as i wanted to participate in your 1 time event which gave out precursors i would of been so tired i would of been a danger to everyone at my work place and a bad father.

Why couldnt you run this even over 2 days so those of us who bust our kitten to make the world go round have a chance to participate in events for a game we actually throw money at.

Also it gave out precursors really anet that is just kittening insulting i am 300 gold spent on precursors and i am living in the fields of gold.

And you just give out precursor.

Could you please take your appendage out of my poopshoot and give me a kittening break please.

And when i say precursors i still aint got mine that is 300 gold wasted on your stupid mystic forge!

This was the first event that I can say overall, I did not enjoy it. I would have liked to have been able to do the scavenger hunt throughout the weekend, rather than for just a day – I was not able to complete it, even with it extended through Phase 2, though I could have completed it had it been extended through Phase 3. I have no idea what the event Miyani was doing – the text as to what to do confused me. I do not know what Phase 2 even was. All I knew is that the new map reminded me of Embark Beach in GW1 and was a very nice landscape artistically. Also, the story seemed non-existent (for the entirety of the weekend).

Phase 3 is an entirely different animal. The multiple times you had to kill waves of reinforcements just plain seemed dull. The only thing I found cool in Phase 3 was the avalanche created by players. I didn’t even get to see the final cut-scene because the way point was so far away from the final boss. A way point closer to the boss would have also solved the issue of my guildie not being able to get the loot/us not being able to fight the final boss after being involved in the event for 2.5 hours at that point. A way point and/or an interface (system like that you get after completing steps in your story or your daily or even just completing an event) or mail system based reward system would have been much better. Because my guildie didn’t get his loot and overall I wouldn’t consider that 2.5 hours “fun”, the event left a bad taste in my mouth and I didn’t want to play GW2 again for awhile. I will now, though, now that I know there will be a solution. But I want to see it (hopefully soon).
Also, out of fairness, “flashback” events could occur so people from all time zones could participate in the event fairly comfortably without having to be up at strange hours.

Oh, the dungeon was nifty, too. Just, for our group of 3 currently, not possible to finish.

Disappointment. Frustration. Impatience. Am awaiting some information from ArenaNet other than “we have a team looking into it” and “the forum software glitched” so mine and hundreds of other posts about feedback were ‘lost’.

My positive suggestions are to indicate to the player base (ie customers) whether ‘the team looking into it’ is simply trying to understand what went wrong with the last event from a technical point of view; or is it investigating if/how to recompense players. Even an ‘investigations are expected to be complete by……’ would be handy.

What is happening with the game on my server is dropped numbers of players and low guild morale. It’s like those of us playing daily still are holding their breaths waiting to see what ArenaNet’s response will be. The longer we wait, the lower morale goes. It’s the way people are.

ArenaNet did a great job of building a game that is a pleasure to play. They understood the player’s perspective, wants and needs. Surely they can tell how player’s are feeling now.

I’m posting this despite the risk of it also being lost in software glitches because I just spent time playing with a guild member who got a precursor and about 5 other exotics, large bag etc etc who stayed connected in the final event an hour longer than I did and who only had 12 more karka kills to his credit than I did at the end of the event. All I got was crab meat and a huge repair bill from unplayable lag. So reading the posts here about how I must have a poor internet connection to have had dc problems or that it is wrong of me to expect a reward after a two and half hours of dying and fighting non-stop are not helping.

What would help is an update from ArenaNet.

I saw the thread on the disconnects at the end of the Ancient Karka even, I did not discount but I wasn’t sure where to post this comment/complaint. I spent a good 1-1/2 to 2 hours on the Ancient Karka event on Sunday and completed until the end. Unfortunately, I died right at the end and I had to retreat (wasn’t getting a rez) while I was trying to fight my way get back to the chest it disappeared. I don’t mean to sound terrible here but it is very frustrating to spend that much time on something to lose out just because the waypoint is too far away for a single player to fight back from and miss out on the rewards.

I’m well aware that the forum is being rather heavily moderated these days, and I’m sure there’s a real risk that this post will be deleted for being written in a rather negative tone. But before you, dear moderator, deletes this post, please take a moment to consider that negative feedback is often very valuable feedback, and in some cases the best feedback. And my intention with this post was to provide just that, valuable and constructive feedback. Please allow the developers to read it :-)

Many players will probably disagree with me as well as many will agree with me, but that’s not the point. You, the developers, are asking for feedback and I’m providing just that: my feedback. Please pardon my wall of text.

To sum it up: In my personal and humble oppinion, this patch is the worst thing that has happened to GW2 as of yet. I believe it’s true as was mentioned in the pre-patch marketing: “Tyria will never be the same!” Sadly, not in the way I hoped it would mean.

Introduction of vertical progression (or power creep if you like) along with massive gear grind in the form of Ascended gear was the last thing this game needed, and in my oppinion was totally uncalled for. Also, this design change goes against a lot, if not most, of what was advertised in the manifesto video as well as lots of other blog posts and marketing stunts before release.
I’m terribly sorry that you closed the infamous 11 000 + replies thread before I got a chance to post in it. I could elaborate a lot more on this particular point but I will leave it at that, at least in this thread.

Content gating is another terrible introduction with this patch. The result of it is now rearing it’s ugly head in Lion’s Arch. It splits up the community and causes more elitism than the old dungeons ever did. Hang out in LA for a few minutes and look at map chat, or look at a few of the many threads out there speaking of it.

Both of the above issues are tightly linked together, and must be solved together. The solution I would urge you to choose is:
- Reduce Ascended gear’s stats to be equal to excotic gear, only with an empty infusion slot to differentiate the two.
- By doing this there’s no need to make ascended gear available outside of FotM.
- Make infusions ONLY apply their bonuses in FotM. Not in WvW, not in the open world, not in any other dungeons and most importantly not in any future content.
- Better yet, remove infusions and (what I think is a very cheap gameplay mechanism) agony all together, this is probably the only way to reduce the elitist attitude to a minimum. But on the other hand this will be very unpopular amongst the treadmill runners.
- Players who already aquired Ascended gear and infusions could be compensated for their now reduced stats. For example give them a “we’re-sorry-chest” (you can probably come up with a better name for it) that contains a random precursor weapon, or perhaps something else that takes a lot of luck or resources to aquire.
- Redesign FotM such that a party will always enter at lvl 1. Each new fractal should increase the difficulty level by 1, and you could have a rest between each fractal as you now have a rest after doing 3 fractals. This would be very much in line with the “how deep can you go” attitude that was used in the blog post describing FotM. It would help to avoid the dividing of the community we now see, but it would not reduce the elitist attitude we’re currently seeing.
- Add intangible rewards for beating different levels of FotM. Titles come to mind as something that worked well as intangible rewards in GW1 (although that may be a new cause for elitism….)
- Leave the daily reward chest in there after beating X levels, as that is probably an important motivation for those who like to run this new treadmill. And this patch seems to have been aimed at that crowd specifically.

A related problem is that earlier zones feel pretty much abandoned after the last patch, even more than they already did before the patch. I love the “whole game is the endgame” philosophy that was announced before launch, but that doesn’t seem very viable with the current state of the game. The fixes I suggested to ascended gear and infusions above would certainly help to fix this issue as well, in addition to:
- Make downscaling a lot harsher, make it affect your equipment too. As it has been since launch you’re pretty much one- and two-shotting everything in the earlier zones with a lvl 80. Heck, even my lvl 30 thief with sub-par gear feels like a ruthless murderer when running around in Queensdale.
- Give players more level-appropriate rewards throughout the entire game. I understand you’ve done this for lvl 55+ zones and that I appreciate. But expand on this to include ALL of Tyria, please.

(1/2)

(2/2)

As for the event itself, well… It went off to a rough start, and continued with more problems. Oh well, I’ll make it short and just add my suggestions:
- Make events like this repeat, to make them accessible to more people.
- Don’t give out excessive rewards during one-time events (even if they repeat throughout the day). There are still people who can’t attend the event either way and who might be upset at not having a shot at the “grand prize”. (No, I didn’t get a precursor either. I’m not jealous on those who did, and I’m happy with the 20-slot box as it saved me 10 gold.)
- Reduce max allowed number of people in the zone when you run such events, that seems to be the only way to avoid lag and culling issues.
- Better testing of the events with at least the max number of people in the zone. Preferably through external connection if the problem isn’t identified as being server-side only.
- Someone else mentioned a “reset-button” on key npcs. It doesn’t fix the root of the issue with bugged out event npcs, but I think it’s a good idea that will allow you to help scavenger hunts and the like to run more smoothly.

I was a little disappointed that the new map is so small. But that’s a minor concern, after all it’s free content. And it’s actual content, just not higher numbers on your gear.

FotM dungeon is also a good addition in and of itself. I’ve only done two different fractals so far, and I liked them. But I didn’t like them enough to run them 50 times on end… The really sad thing is that the first two concerns I mentioned (power creep and content gating) keeps overshadowing the fun and the content itself.

Now, one of the most important things you, the developers, can do at this point is to make a clear statement about which direction you intend this game to follow in the future. This last patch is a complete U-turn compared to earlier design statements and that is making a poor player like me very confused. Please don’t ask me to just go read the last blog post from Chris Whiteside, because that blog post really doesn’t answer the question that is important to so many players: “Will this game evolve into a game that I would like to play or not?”

No matter what your statement will be, one group of players will answer “yes” and the other group will answer “no” to that question. However, if you don’t give a clear statement you risk that both groups of players just say “forget it” and move along. Then you’re left with just the players who doesn’t really care which way the game goes, and they would’ve probably stayed for a while anyway…

Best regards
Jersey

Just quick feedback on a smaller, and probably overlooked thing:
Can you just please put up a post when it is ok to delete the event items? Kinda running low on bag space and still have a map, soggy bag, magic scroll and candy-powered meter thing eating up room. Thanks!

We are the 99%!
On a serious note, my post got deleted in that merge thread. I too was unfortunate twice d/cd. So sad but glad they are fixing it!

did not participate in Lost Shore, on principle. See sig below.

I would like to add that the explorer in me was disappointed there was no map completion for Southsun Cove, overall I really like the island and the events and jumping puzzles.

I do not like Agony and gated content due to game mechanics/gear checks. I hope that this is not the course the game is headed in. I would like to see elite skills for weapon slots 1-5 that we can swap out like we do for 6-0. This would be a great way to progress at 80 and take on tougher challenges and at the same time give us much more customization. More cosmetic options to work for too.

I’d love to do your survey regarding The Lost Shores. However the link given by the email from guildwars2@ncsoft.com is broken.

The event was great. I had great fun. Though I had 3 main concerns that I suggest you to change next time:
1. I fell in the lava pit which I didn’t see because of the camera zooming in auto and because of the boss being so big. I had to choose, stay death or quickly return from waypoint (nobody could reach me to res me). I choose the waypoint and missed the end movie.
- Primary: show a popup asking: “You participated in the epic one time event, you want to see the movie?” When you say yes then you show the movie as long as you are in the area. The complete area, just like you can pull people of your party into the story.
- Secondary: Please add a waypoint more close to the even location
2. When you do an epic event please announce the waypoint. We had to know from the gossip circuit where the event would happen. Put a point of interest or waypoint on your website next time.
3. Like a mad man I was reviving and healing, but still in some parts I got silver because I probably didnt hit the boss enough or I was hold back from the event circle by the boss or his minions. Maybe give also participation points if you revive in the area and make the event area around the boss or make it reset to his event area spot (the orange circle).

I thought every aspect of this “Lost Shores” fiasco was ABYSMAL.

On lowest ugly ugly UGLY settings I ran at 25fps
On highest settings I ran at 19fps.

1920×1080
Intel i5 2500k 3.5ghz x 4
Nvidia 560Ti OC x 2 in SLI
120gb SATA3 SSD
8gb DDR3 RAM
Win7 64bit
and i’ve been a computer systems builder for 15 years.

You wasted all of your money and resources on creating one-time only events that were PAINFUL to complete, LONG as hell, and i felt REQUIRED to be there because of all the loot.

I don’t see how anyone can enjoy ANY video game at under 30fps.

KWman.3012:

I’d love to do your survey regarding The Lost Shores. However the link given by the email from guildwars2@ncsoft.com is broken.

Funny, have not received any survey. I would like to give feedback.

Jersey.6987:

I’m well aware that the forum is being rather heavily moderated these days, and I’m sure there’s a real risk that this post will be deleted for being written in a rather negative tone. But before you, dear moderator, deletes this post, please take a moment to consider that negative feedback is often very valuable feedback, and in some cases the best feedback. And my intention with this post was to provide just that, valuable and constructive feedback. Please allow the developers to read it :-)

Many players will probably disagree with me as well as many will agree with me, but that’s not the point. You, the developers, are asking for feedback and I’m providing just that: my feedback. Please pardon my wall of text.

To sum it up: In my personal and humble oppinion, this patch is the worst thing that has happened to GW2 as of yet. I believe it’s true as was mentioned in the pre-patch marketing: “Tyria will never be the same!” Sadly, not in the way I hoped it would mean.

Introduction of vertical progression (or power creep if you like) along with massive gear grind in the form of Ascended gear was the last thing this game needed, and in my oppinion was totally uncalled for. Also, this design change goes against a lot, if not most, of what was advertised in the manifesto video as well as lots of other blog posts and marketing stunts before release.
I’m terribly sorry that you closed the infamous 11 000 + replies thread before I got a chance to post in it. I could elaborate a lot more on this particular point but I will leave it at that, at least in this thread.

Content gating is another terrible introduction with this patch. The result of it is now rearing it’s ugly head in Lion’s Arch. It splits up the community and causes more elitism than the old dungeons ever did. Hang out in LA for a few minutes and look at map chat, or look at a few of the many threads out there speaking of it.

Both of the above issues are tightly linked together, and must be solved together. The solution I would urge you to choose is:
- Reduce Ascended gear’s stats to be equal to excotic gear, only with an empty infusion slot to differentiate the two.
- By doing this there’s no need to make ascended gear available outside of FotM.
snip

(1/2)

^This. Thank you for sharing it. Because i agree.

I filled out the survey in regards to the Lost Shores event but found it to be a bit restrictive so I figured this was the best place to leave my comments due to the area it related to.

Overall I enjoyed the event. There was some level of frustration due to lag but experiences from other MMOs and living in australia has conditioned me to being used to such issues. I found all other aspects of the event to be fun and enjoyable. The bugged events were fixed in a timely manner (less than 24 hours) which is a nice change from some other MMOs which i played that had simple bugs from 4 years prior.

I don’t think having a free trial on the same weekend as one-off events was a great idea, at least not until the servers can be brought to the level where they can handle the current population in one area without lag. However I did think the idea of a friend trial was a good one, just the wrong weekend to do it.

One question on the survey I had issue with was about if I would refer people to this game based on the Lost Shores weekend. It only allowed a simple yes/no/maybe response. I would not refer people to this game based on that particular weekend. Content was awesome, execution not as great. However I would readily refer people to this game based on the regular content and realistically i think that is what they should be referred on. A new player is going to be starting out and less likely to be participating in such events – they’re just trying to work out the game.

I think next time – try to make sure the servers can handle it, put a trial on a couple or a few weeks prior but after the event has been announced to try to pull people in before the event and get them into the game a bit more, don’t put the trial on the same weekend as the event and most of all keep developing the awesome content for us.

Cheers!

Here’s to next time!

I didn’t even get to participate in the event. My dad sent the PC for repairs without telling me =/ ….and then I rejoined only to see the lion statue gone again with no friggin idea what on earth happened when I was away, no explanations, nothing.

The lag spike is getting worse. both in dungeon and WvW.
The issue that causes enemy display like 2 or 3 seconds later on WvW is not yet solved.
A bug make mobs invulnerable in underwater combat is not yet solved neither.

Those are just a small portion of the issues list, all were found long ago, all very disturbing, very annoying, and you feel exciting for the new content?

I feel disappointed, and my patience is running out, my playing experience is getting worse, too.

Making new content is a great idea, surely you want to provide more, and it’s good that you keep improve this game, but your priority of works needs a rethinking, how could people enjoy a game which is so buggy and so lame? maybe it’s about time to fix those major issues that makes people feel frustration.

Now talking about the new map, many have said this and i’d like to say it again, it’s pointless, not much to do, just a small island with a few events, not much to say neither.

Well, here’s my feedback on the event.

FotM Dungeon – I really like this, actually. The levels are well designed, the fights aren’t artificially hard by pumping extra HP into the various mobs/bosses. They’re fun. It’s just a shame that 2 disconnects mean I’m currently not playing it. I’m still on level 2 – and both disconnects happened on the final boss for level 2. It’s just too disappointing getting so close to having level 3 unlocked, and then being disconnected from what you’ve worked for – with no way to reconnect. I’m sure you guys are working on this though!

The new map – It’s better thought out than Orr, which I can appreciate. There’s nothing that I can point to and say ‘this is awful’. However, I doubt I’ll be spending much time there. I’m not really into farming at all. If I ever get the urge to start farming, I’ll probably visit again.

Ascended Gear – You guys probably knew this was coming. I admit, I’m baffled as to why anyone would think this is a good idea, given your original manifesto. I was already slightly disappointed in the stat differences between the level 80 gear as it was. Though only slightly, as getting exotic gear isn’t too bad – at least there are plenty of different ways to get Exotic gear easily. Ascended Gear is too grindy/random to get. I don’t want to have to run the same place over and over for a chance to grind out some mats and hope that this time, I’ll get a shiny ring. I want to be playing other parts of the game. I want to be levelling my alts. And I want to be able to continue competing/playing at an equal level, without having a grind to look forward to should I take a break. Seriously – you guys had the whole gear thing right in GW1. Grind for skins, and don’t worry about the stats. What happened? Also, infusion slots – way too grindy as well. The GW1 method (run through this terrain, talk to a Seer, then boom! Your armour set is infused) was way more accessible to people who just want to be able to play the content you guys have released.

The One Time Only event – I was lucky enough to be in a timezone that could actually participate. Due to some RL commitments, I missed out on the first 2 phases though. Phase 3 though … oh dear. I made it to the event. Then I got to watch my character standing still, skill icons glowing. Occasionally, my guildies on vent would inform me that I was dead. It would take 5 minutes for that to show up at my end. For 20 minutes this went on. And this was just at the bomb phase. I didn’t actually disconnect – but I may as well have. If I attempted to move, the server would rubber-band me back to where I’d been trying to move from. This was unplayable for me. The only time I could start moving again was when the zerg moved on to the reinforcements stage. I put up with this for another 10 minutes, then I decided to give it up as a bad job. I went off to do other things, to be told a couple of hours later that the loot was awesome. I didn’t even bother attempting to go back for a chance at the chest – because seeing how bad my lag had been, I’d either miss out because I hadn’t been able to participate thanks to lag, or I’d lag so much even attempting to open the chest that it would disappear before I could loot it. All in all – I was very disappointed. I wanted to participate, and my lack wasn’t due to lack of trying. I’d feel worse for the people who are in timezones that meant they couldn’t even join in, except I’m betting that even if they had made it, they’d have run into similar issues as myself.

Overall, I found this event to be a bit disappointing. I was not able to participate in any of the events occurring at 12pm Pacific time due to work/family obligations. However, I did try some of the other new things.

Friday: Missed the event. I tried the scavenger hunts. I was not able to complete them on Friday due to bugged NPCs though. This was disappointing, but I wasn’t too concerned.

Saturday: Missed the event. I did go check out the Karka island. I tried some of the DEs there and found a couple of jumping puzzles. I like the new crafting items as well. The DEs were fun, but did not get any loot from any of them. I did have fun on the island and explored it thoroughly. I do wish there were map completion for it.

Sunday: Missed the event. Tried to find an overflow server that was still running but did not. I went to cursed shore instead. I would have liked to get that 20-slot bag, so a bit disappointed about that.

I was hoping for a comments section on your survey. I want to elaborate, because I gave some conflicting answers to your last questions. I love the concept of a one time event, but it appears as if technical difficulties does not make this possible. Also, it alienates people who would love to participate but for some reason cannot. So I did pick the option to run these events multiple times, even though I also picked the option to have more one time events. Perhaps, if you make these events instances, or if you allow the event to recycle 2 to 3 times, it may spread out population to allow people to complete these events without so much lag and disconnects. I do remember Rift tried to do one time events at one time as well. They did have the same feedback as is in this thread. They did lengthen their events after that due to player feedback.

I have not yet tried the FotM dungeons, but I hear they are one of the best things of the new content. I do worry about the addition of the ascended armor with additional stats. I think you should remove the stats and just have the agony resist on there. I also see some dividing of the population on our servers due to different levels for the FotM dungeon. I think you really need to add a LFG tool for it now. Perhaps like the one in DDO, if you don’t want to do an automatic grouping one.

Although I was disappointed in this particular event, I will still be playing GW2 for a long time. I am looking forward to Wintersday to see what you come up with next. I did really enjoy your Holloween content, and I hope to see more holiday content like that.

Hey, I just wanted to say that I had a great time during the Lost Shores Event last weekend, and I appreciate all the effort and time you guys in ANet have put into creating this amazing game. The one-time event made me feel like I was helping shape and mold Tyria, and the unique experience made the world feel truly dynamic, as if it was constantly evolving. I can’t wait to see what you guys will come up with in the future.

Kudos to ANet. Keep up the great work!

becouse Against time .For this 3hours no chest event I didnot go to work, I am very disappointed?It won’t happen again?
An Asian player.

Tried to get to Owain’s Refuge the other day and was unable to find a path up the side of that islet, let alone any way to reach the guy collecting Karka eggs for that event. We went completely around that islet looking for a way up, and even went up on the main island but there was no way to cross over. Definitely could NOT jump as it was way to far away.

So my question is this: How on earth are we to get over there to do that egg event and pick up the way point?

There is a ruined ship on the southern side. You can get up there by jumping.

invizo.5408:

I thought every aspect of this “Lost Shores” fiasco was ABYSMAL.

On lowest ugly ugly UGLY settings I ran at 25fps
On highest settings I ran at 19fps.

1920×1080
Intel i5 2500k 3.5ghz x 4
Nvidia 560Ti OC x 2 in SLI
120gb SATA3 SSD
8gb DDR3 RAM
Win7 64bit
and i’ve been a computer systems builder for 15 years.

You wasted all of your money and resources on creating one-time only events that were PAINFUL to complete, LONG as hell, and i felt REQUIRED to be there because of all the loot.

I don’t see how anyone can enjoy ANY video game at under 30fps.

I think you’ve missed the fact that your PC- and game-specs have little to nothing to do with server-side lag. When, as a server, you’re trying to govern the actions and content of hundreds of people, it’s just not viable to go above a certain limit before the game looks and feels too chunky. If it’s gonna drop, it’ll drop people because it can’t handle the load.

I am running a PC with similar specs to yours and mine was just as bad, although the FPS rate was way worse (max 12FPS in only the first phase of the event). Why? Simple. My connection from half way around the world in competition with everyone else who is 95% guaranteed to be closer to the server than me. If you can’t drop the latency you can’t pick up the FPS.

I do agree that the event was abysmal, totally. But do be thankful that you got to be there for the final event… others were less fortunate, myself included.

I cleared the Karka cave in the first part of the event then i fight the Ancient Karka to 3-4 Phrase (I think) the one he goes into the cave then the weebing part and i had network issues, got disconnected and I couldn’t log in… so much for the 2 hours and half spend…

A week on, and I have a question for Anet:

Was this always going to be released on Nov 15th no matter what?

I ask because so much of this update feels unfinished and buggy, and I can’t imagine that these all went unnoticed in testing.

The new zone seems pretty devoid of content. What are we supposed to be doing here now that the one-time events are over? It looks nicer than Orr (every single zone in the game does), but no vistas, no hearts, so few dynamic events, and so few people make this zone feel either pointless or unfinished.

DCing from Fractals prevents you from re-entering, and forces the group to restart or just 4 man the rest. And no fix in a week?

Was the design of the FotM being leveled an intentional thing to split people up? I can’t imagine it was, but I also can’t imagine no one on the design team foresaw the playerbase fragmenting. Yet there are no systems in-game to help alleviate this fragmenting (useful LFG tool, choosing to move LA zones, etc).

It just feels like you guys were always planning on releasing this content on Nov 15th, regardless if it was done or not – and it doesn’t feel like it’s done yet, and the problems with the one-time events show they didn’t take into account culling (evident in WvW since launch day), buggy NPCs (evident all over Orr since launch day), or lag (evident in every MMO since the first MMO).

There are a few separate elements that tend to get mixed up.

1) The manifesto and all interviews that say this game is not about a treadmill. By itself this turn around came without warning and just is a complete 180 on your original course. By itself that is a slap in the face for many people like myself. I don’t like surprises like this because you broke a promise. That’s what your manifesto was, you should’ve realised that when you released it.

2) The actual effects of the FotM dungeon on the community. Aside from actually implementing a treadmill, be it very basic to begin with is also done in a way that is splitting the people who are still playing it seems.

3) Also adding stats to the infusion upgrades and adding a new tier really gives the game a new feeling, one I don’t like. I can’t log in anymore because of it.

4) Then the issue of communication. You respond to the bugs during the weekend but haven’t addressed specifically point 1 here. You cannot convince me that you didn’t expect this kittentorm, but you chose to let it just hit and stay silent on it. Just one attempt at easing people’s minds which totally didn’t help because of what was implied more than what was said and really ignores the key issue: You made a promise and didn’t keep it and have been acting as if nothing happened. That reeks of intent.

5) You wanted to make GW2 and let GW1 be and were excited about creating a persistent world. So you made one. Guess what, you have now sealed the fate of the persistent world by making sure people are either in WvW or FotM / LA. You might as well close down the persistent world and give people access to dungeons from LA and let them level in WvW.

I just don’t get what you did here, but to me it’s a big failure. You see, even if you took a million precautions, a lot of people just won’t believe you anymore when you say it’s not that bad and we are making sure it won’t affect casuals…Why would they believe you when you so obviously broke a promise and then refuse to address as if you are hiding something?

That just feels like either malicious intent or incompetence to handle communication. Either way, it’s not very encouraging for the future.

One week on and still no reply mmmmm, Oh silly me thats right hey all went on holidays

Hope they had a nice holiday

Hope they can give a decent answer to our complaints

Let the fun begin tomooro

everything well, but why event started so late and Sunday? Unfortunately I could not participate the event as the end of the next day I had to get up very early for work. And that I have with this event. I think it’s not a good idea to organize such events in these hours and on Sunday.
Sorry for my bad English