Guild Wars 2

Lunatic Inquisition is a completely unbalanced mess, largely because the 5 “Mad King Says” skills are guaranteed kills for ghosts. Sure, it’s an activity and not meant to be the paragon of balance, but it favors ghosts over villagers to the point that it’s nearly unplayable. It’s extremely difficult and time consuming for villagers to win the game. Most villagers would rather just suicide into ghosts because it puts them on the winning team without making the match last 15 minutes.

Even though many people complained about how unbalanced it was last year, it was brought back with no changes. PLEASE consider rebalancing this skill(s) Anet, I want to look forward to holiday activities not dread them. I’m really disappointed too because Lunatic Inquisition has the potential to be really fun.

Current version:

My reworked version:

let’s not forget that if you find a hiding spot, you have to jump or move every 30 seconds or you’ll be kicked for inactivity

RollFzzlbeef.4092:

let’s not forget that if you find a hiding spot, you have to jump or move every 30 seconds or you’ll be kicked for inactivity

Yeah, that is quite counter intuitive.

Or the fact that if you manage to evade the ghosts for the duration of the game, the achievement won’t progress (it requires you to “interact with the enemy”)

Could certainly use a proper pass. I do love the premise though. Lot of potential.

this years inquisition is markedly worse than last, now theres a bug where people occasionally arent transformed from normal… its hell for villagers who cant be equipped to deal with extra soft cc or outrun fast courtiers.

insanemaniac.2456:

this years inquisition is markedly worse than last, now theres a bug where people occasionally arent transformed from normal… its hell for villagers who cant be equipped to deal with extra soft cc or outrun fast courtiers.

There are villagers too with super speed. Took the entire map to catch one of them as we had to split up to cut him off.

Yep it’s terrible. If you look up on youtube there is a way for villagers to get a rifle from Mad King Thorn. But you’ve got to do a few steps and you can get killed easily before getting it.

It’s a bummer because usually I like the mini game in GW holidays… but usually the game is balanced and that’s why I like it. I just can’t bring myself to mess with this much more.

Villagers can actually get very powerful, if they banded together and got tools. I won last year as a sole villager, and I want to do that again this year. Game mechanics, I think it’s fine…but the bugs break it.

I hate the ones where players don’t get transformed and can run around and kill everyone in sight. It’s no fun. I had to map jump several times to get a good match.

Just finished my 2nd match [i got quite bored of this in last year, so i didn’t want to do it now]..and kitten , half of players runned without transformation. What the hell?!

Somoe.3621:

Lunatic Inquisition is a completely unbalanced mess, largely because the 5 “Mad King Says” skills are guaranteed kills for ghosts. Sure, it’s an activity and not meant to be the paragon of balance, but it favors ghosts over villagers to the point that it’s nearly unplayable. It’s extremely difficult and time consuming for villagers to win the game. Most villagers would rather just suicide into ghosts because it puts them on the winning team without making the match last 15 minutes.

Even though many people complained about how unbalanced it was last year, it was brought back with no changes. PLEASE consider rebalancing this skill(s) Anet, I want to look forward to holiday activities not dread them. I’m really disappointed too because Lunatic Inquisition has the potential to be really fun.

Current version:

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1. Mad King Says Shrug – 1.2k range, 1.5s cast time, 50s cooldown
2. Mad King Says Cower – 1.2k range, 1.5s cast time, 30s cooldown
3. Mad King Says Salute – 1.2k range, 1.5s cast time, 40s cooldown
4. Mad King Says Ponder – 1.2k range, 1.5s cast time, 60s cooldown
5. Mad King Says Dance – 1.2k range, 1.5s cast time, 70s cooldown

- Commands target villager to perform one of the following emotes: shrug, cower, salute, ponder, or dance. The emote chosen is based on which skill was used.
- Target villager drops all held items.
- Inflicts the “Mad King Says (Emote)” effect on the target for 10 seconds, changing their skills into various emote skills.
- If the correct emote skill is used within 10 seconds: the effect is removed and the villager is forced to channel in place as they perform the emote, disabling them (length varies). The villager also scores 15 points on the scoreboard and gains swiftness for 10 seconds.
- If an incorrect emote skill is used, or if none are used, within 10 seconds: the effect ends, damaging and stunning the target for ~1 second. The ghost also scores 15 points on the scoreboard.
- While the Mad King Says effect (10s duration) is on a villager, the ghost that applied it has their other Mad King Says skills disabled.

My reworked version:

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1. Mad King Says – 1.2k range, 1s cast time, kitten cooldown

- Commands target villager to perform one of the following emotes: salute, cower, dance, bow, or ponder. Emote is chosen randomly.
- Target villager drops all held items.
- Inflicts the “Mad King Says (Emote)” effect on the target for 10 seconds, changing each of their first 5 skills into a random emote skill. Targets will only be given one of each emote skill at a time.
- If the correct emote skill is used within 10 seconds: the effect is removed and the villager is forced to channel in place as they perform the emote, disabling them for 3 seconds. The villager also scores 15 points on the scoreboard and gains swiftness for 13 seconds.
- If an incorrect emote skill is used, or if none are used, within 10 seconds: the effect ends, damaging and stunning the target for 1.5 seconds. The ghost also scores 15 points on the scoreboard.
- This skill cannot be used again until the ghost scores a kill or assist on a villager.

Bullkitten
Once you play “Mad King Says!” correctly, it puts your stealth off cooldown. and you have time before doing anything too.
Turn the corner. Pick the correct emote. Stealth Immediately.
You’re 200% safe. Yup.
Now with player characters playing for ghosts in lunatic inqisition… I’ve already had lots of “fun” getting my Villager destroyed by a Thief… I just raged and never came back to this crappy game anymore because of it. I mean i’m honestly expected to do something as a Villager when a Thief( yes, real player character in game) attacks me? this bug MUST be fixed.

Keep this thread alive, I want to know if Anet actually cares about activities at all. :/

I usually give them the benefit of the doubt, but it really just seems like they ignored all of the feedback from last year.

Somoe.3621:

Keep this thread alive, I want to know if Anet actually cares about activities at all. :/

I usually give them the benefit of the doubt, but it really just seems like they ignored all of the feedback from last year.

They’re not going to fix Lunatic Inquisition, because it’s only going to be around for two weeks. They already fixed the bug that had people not transforming from their regular skills.

RollFzzlbeef.4092:

let’s not forget that if you find a hiding spot, you have to jump or move every 30 seconds or you’ll be kicked for inactivity

Probably because you as villagers are not supposed to hide, also you get credit for that activityonly if you interact with the opposed party. So villagers have not to just hid but they have to do the gathering events on the corners if they want to survive the night.

Mareth.8659:

RollFzzlbeef.4092:

let’s not forget that if you find a hiding spot, you have to jump or move every 30 seconds or you’ll be kicked for inactivity

Probably because you as villagers are not supposed to hide, also you get credit for that activityonly if you interact with the opposed party. So villagers have not to just hid but they have to do the gathering events on the corners if they want to survive the night.

The gathering events are designed to be as inconvenient as possible though.

1.) Torches:
- Event is in the northeast corner
- Torches spawn most in the southwest corner

2.) Bones:
- Event is in the northwest corner
- Bones spawn most in the southeast corner

3.) Spider Webs:
- Event is in the southeast corner
- Webs spawn most in the west/northwest area

4.) Black Goo:
- Event is in the southwest corner
- Goo spawns most in the east/northeast area

You’re expected to trek all over the map as multiple Courtiers (who can make you drop your items from 1200 range) chase you, all so you can give away the only tools keeping you alive. Not only that, but there’s three freaking tiers to the events! Usually, 3+ Courtiers are swarming the area by the time the first stage is ~80% complete.

If by some act of god you’re able to complete all 3 tiers you just get:

Tier 1 – Feast that can be used a limited number of times by allies, healing and granting swiftness.
Tier 2 – Group of normal rank allied NPCs to patrol the area.
Tier 3 – One veteran rank allied NPC to patrol the area.

This might have been useful if killing Courtiers actually had any effect, but they respawn almost instantly at the very spot they died…

Mareth.8659:

Probably because you as villagers are not supposed to hide, also you get credit for that activityonly if you interact with the opposed party. So villagers have not to just hid but they have to do the gathering events on the corners if they want to survive the night.

Who says you aren’t supposed to hide? Certainly you’re better off working with other villagers, but hiding in some capacity (whether standing still or actively avoiding ghosts) helps you survive. And unless you’ve got another villager to help you out, it’s actually pretty easy for one ghost to chase you down once they’ve got you in their sights.

That said, I would be curious to see how the game would play without the “mad king says” abilities. I find that they are easy-mode for catching up to villagers.

Somoe.3621:

This might have been useful if killing Courtiers actually had any effect, but they respawn almost instantly at the very spot they died…

Yeah, I gotta admit, I don’t get the choice for this part. I get why ghosts have infinite respawn, but I don’t get why their respawn is exactly where they died when they already have a spawn point. Seems almost contradictory. Like “here are tools for damaging the ghosts – just don’t bother because they’ll come right back exactly where you took them down” ???

Mad king says is fine.

I’d balance the game by

(1) making the villager events much better
(2) making it easier to get the rifle
(3) in games that are not full when the game starts, new players come into the game as villagers
(4) Reduce the range of radar

I will confess.

When villagers actually unite they can do reasonably well, however, the reason Ghosts are OP now is because they were terrible in the first year and lacked any way to catch upto villagers.

Suffice to say, MK says is a terrible and very lazy fix. I think the easiest quickfix is to make something like a buff called, “Mad King’s Sanction” on following the correct emote.

Also, things like the pumpkin don’t work sometimes so you miss out the rifle unless you hit a ghost which I honestly feel is pretty terrible. They should add more weapons for villagers, and buff effects as well from food, items and the like. Perhaps a 1 option for use on self and 2 for use on target?

Torches could give “Firey Retaliation”, for example, to self.

Part 1:
Heres my version of how I think this Minigame should work:
LUNATIC INQUISITION REDUX V2.0

First of the things that we keep so, as they are now:

• The Map

The Map is already absolutely fine, nearly nothing needs to be changed here, except one thing.

- In the southeastern corner needs to be fixed that out of range boulder, which some people exploit to get out of reach for the ghosts because as a ghosts its extremly hard to follow there, not impossible, have seen that today, but very unlikely that an inexperienced ghost which isnt good at jumping can ever follow there, so to me its clearly an exploit to have an easy win as a living player which needs to get fixed by making it impossible to jump over the ledge there to get out of range for everybody.

General Mechanics of the Minigame which need Changes:

- Reduce the Match Timer from ridiculous long 13 Minutes down to just 7 Minutes per Match
- Reduce the amount of Players from like 16 down to just only 10 Players

• Redesign the Events by making them quicker to complete for Villagers.
  - Instead of 5 Items per Tier to complete a Tier of an Event, the NPCs require now only 3 Items per Tier
  - Items aren’t placed now anymore, so that Villagers have to track over all the Plac,e more different items start to appear now first once more Tiers of the Villager Event have been successfully completed.
  The Event first starts with Torches, all 4 NPC’s will want Torches, once the Torch Event is complete, Bones will start to appear with the Bone Event and so on …
  - Tier Effects get changed
  - All players are now invulnerable at the Start of a Match as long until the Match begins and everyone gets warped to a random spot.

Ghost Changes

• Ghosts can be exocised now by Villagers once the Torch Event has been completed, there randomly can appear now also a new “Bottle of Blessed Water”. if a Ghost gets hit by that, the Ghost will get exocised and banished so that this player won’t be able to reappear. An exorcised Ghost grants the Villager Player a big amount of Points.
  A Bottle of Blessed Water will appear only every Minute and only, if the previous one has been used successfully. So theres a maximum of theoretically 7 Bottles that can appear in a Match, but not possible, because you have to get first 9 Torches.

• Fix – Ghosts will actually really move now 33% faster after having killed a Villager

• Trap Size gets increased by 50% and Traps get their ICD removed when trying to lay the same type of trap twice afte another. You grab an item, and you can lay the trap directly regardless of what kind of item you’ve take.
  However, every Ghost Player is only able to lay down now a maximum of 10 Traps.
  If you want to lay a next trap, which would be the 11th normally, it will remove automatically the oldest trap that you’ve layed, unless a Villager has run into one of your Traps meanwhile naturally.

Ghost Skills

Hacking
Reduce its range by 10%, it magically often hits Villagers, even when they are like felt 3 meters away from the Ghost.

Leap
Raise the Range by 50%, but also reduce the Damage by 33%

Fear
Raise its Damage by 33% and turn it from a Cone Fear to a Circular Fear that does 1 tiem big damage, instead of multiple hits per second damage. Raise the Points fearing a Villager gives from 2 per Hit to 10 per that one Hit

Scarecrow
Reduce its Range by 33%, but also reduce its ICD fro 45seconds down to 30s

Trap

Torch = Fire Trap > Causes a Fire Field for 10s which lets Villagers burn, should they run through it cause of fear.
Bone = Undead Trap > Causes Grasping Hands from the Dead inm the Underground crippling a Villager for 3s
Black Goo = Goo Trap > Causes Blindness reducing for 10s the Sight of the Villager and lets them not see Items on the Ground.
Spider Web = Venom Trap > Causes Venom, which renders the next usage of Food to be tormenting
Food = Ghostly Dinner > Can either Heal the Villager completely and give them a Buff that protects them agaisnt the next 3 Fears and reduces Damage from Ghosts for the next 3 Hits, or it redults in a Death for the villager due to the Dinner being poisoned. 60% for Buff 40% for Death. (so that theres at least an incentive to go try your Luck)

Part 2:

Villager Skills

Villagers have now more Skills and easier access to some helpful Tools.
Hammers are now not anymore near the Center of the Map.
Hammers appear now at the 4 Corners, once Tier one of the Villager Event has been done.
Hammers get exchanged with Chain Swords once Tier 2 has been done.
Chain Swords get exchanged with Ghost Buster Rifles once Tier 3 has been done successfully.

Villagers have without a Tool in Hands these 5 Skills now

1) Sprint
Gives them for 3s a short Swiftness to run faster. IDC 10s
2) “I won’t run away!”
Breaks Fear. Gives some stacks of Might.
3) Adrenaline Rush
Gain Vigor for 10s and get Healed if you successfully dodge attacks in that time.
4) Battle Your Fears
Gain Fury and Retaliation for 5s
5) Hide
Gain 10s of Stealth and Stability, while you are in your Hiding Zone

Torch > Replaces Sprint with “Burn in Hell” creating a Fireball, that causes Vulnerability and Burning to the Ghost as also stops them from moving for 3s
Bone > Replaces Sprint with “Banish” creating a holy symbolic field on the cround, that Ghosts can’t enter that knocks them back on touch.
Black Goo > replaces Sprint with “Spiritual Eye” giving the Villager for the next 5s a sense where evil spirits are, letting the player see the locations of the Ghosts on the Minimap.
Spider Web > replaces Sprint with “Silk Armor” giving the Villager for 3s Protection and Ghosts suffer on Weakness, Cripple or Blindness when hitting a Villager under Silk Armor.
Food > Replaces Sprint with “Healthy Runner”, letting you sprint very fast and gain Regeneration and Stability for 5s, however, Food gets a ICD and can’t be used anymore quick after another.
——

Hammer > Replaces the Villager Skills with 5 Hammer Skills
Greatsword > Replaces the Villager Skills with 5 Greatsword Skills
Rifle > Replaces the Villager Skills with 5 Rifle Skills
——

Events

(Torch Event)
Tier 1 > After 3 Torches Hammers appear and every 2 Minutes appear a few Village Dogs around the Corners which help Villagers against Ghosts and protect them.
Tier 2 > After 6 Torches the Village Dogs turn into Fiery Hellhounds which are stronger than before and faster and can cause fear to Ghosts
Tier 3 > After 9 Torches will appear now Bottles of Blessed Water every minute.

(Bone Event) Starts after Torches.
Tier 1 > After 3 Bones Greatswords will appear and replace the Hammers
Tier 2 > After 6 Bones will gain Villagers the Strong Bones Buff, reducing damage fro them by 10% and raising their Sprint Duration by +1s
Tier 3 > After 9 Bones, Bone Guardians patrol between the corners then.

(Goo Event) Starts after Bone Event
Tier 1 > After 3 Goos Greatswords will get replaced by Ghost Buster Rifles
Tier 2 > Goo Walls will appear periodically at the Center Ring, preventing Ghosts to get to the outer area, until they destroy first the Goo Walls.
Tier 3 >Candy Corn Elementals protect now the Goo Walls.

(Spider Web Event) Final Event after the Goo Event
Tier 1 > After 3 Webs Plastic Spiders will randomly fall from thy sky causing poison fields for Ghosts and damage.
Tier 2 > After 6 Webs, the Spiders will be more powerful and the poison gets replaced with Torment.
Tier 3 > After 9 Webs, the Attacks of the falling dowen Spiders will stun also the Ghosts.

Sure, this concept needs finetuning, but I think with these changes would make Lunatic Inquisition more fun for both sides

I like that. It sounds way more engaging.

Honestly, asking for all these changes is WAY overboard. Last year is no different from this year, and last year I’ve managed to survive very long as a villager, usually with 1-2 minutes left on the clock. This year is different: people give up and the game ends with 6 minutes left.

Part of the issue is villagers don’t believe they can win, so they just flat-out give up. Maybe if we nerf the emotes so they don’t get spammed constantly, it’ll give villagers some kind of hope that they can win.

Arikyali.5804:

Honestly, asking for all these changes is WAY overboard. Last year is no different from this year, and last year I’ve managed to survive very long as a villager, usually with 1-2 minutes left on the clock. This year is different: people give up and the game ends with 6 minutes left.

Part of the issue is villagers don’t believe they can win, so they just flat-out give up. Maybe if we nerf the emotes so they don’t get spammed constantly, it’ll give villagers some kind of hope that they can win.

They have no hope partially because…

- The odds are completely stacked against you as a Villager
- Waiting out the timer is a slow/passive way to play
- Villager quests are unnecessarily difficult to complete
- If you do manage to win, you just spent ~15m to get 10 ToT bags

I’d reduce the duration of the game. When all the villagers are converted, the game ends at 4:40. If they villages aren’t all converted, they still need to survive for those additional 4 minutes. Seems like they should just end it 4:40 earlier. This will give the villagers a better chance, without really hurting gameplay.

And the lack of reward, making the splendid chest once per day is horrible and pointless if we have to run it multiple times for the achievements.