Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone.

I just wanted to ask, what was the reason ( I hope logical one) to limit current activities to 1 day each ? If I want to play Keg Braw either for achievemnt or for fun do I have to wait now 3-4 days to open ? Seriously this was a bad move. Yet another time-gated content, even if this is small minigame.
What about Southsun Cove ? What was a reason to close the shipping route to it ? My 1 character can acces there due to teleport,but what If I want to play new one ? Do I have to wait x amount of days for super special event just to go there ? The same about minigames related to this area. Was it hard to put NPC there for Crabb Toss ?

I honestly hope this is not pernament update, especially if more mini-games will be introduced. The amount of time to play some ,,favorite,, could vary even further.

I thought this game allows ,, to play the game how you want,, ? So much for doing achievments or chilling after quest/dungeon run at one of your favorite mini-game.

Definetly a bad move Anet.

When too many mini-game are available to play at once, the population playing them is spread too thin, causing games to be empty. Sometimes this can be good, since it makes some mini-games much quicker, resulting in more loot, but it can also make the games boring.

The daily mini-game can be accessed through an NPC near the portals in Lion’s Arch.

Southsun is accessed using a portal in Lion’s Arch. It’s down the path from Claw Island Portage Waypoint, before the fractals portal.

Healix.5819:

When too many mini-game are available to play at once, the population playing them is spread too thin, causing games to be empty. Sometimes this can be good, since it makes some mini-games much quicker, resulting in more loot, but it can also make the games boring.

The daily mini-game can be accessed through an NPC near the portals in Lion’s Arch.

Southsun is accessed using a portal in Lion’s Arch. It’s down the path from Claw Island Portage Waypoint, before the fractals portal.

This is an absolute bullkitten excuse, at least for Keg Brawl. Why would you take out a mini game that was already permanent and had fans? If you want more people to play it, then kittening support it instead of just forgetting about it and then taking it away from the people who do like it. I started a kittening guild to play with people who also like Keg Brawl, but now they made it almost completely defunct.

How is it there’s still not an option to play a private instance with your kittening friends. Like, there’s no good reasoning for this. It sounds like someone who doesn’t play this game is saying how it should be. It’s just lazy design, and subsequently terrible content management. I have some 500 hours probably invested in Keg Brawl, it’s my favorite non-WvW thing to do in this game. I didn’t spend 500 hours playing alone running it to the goal either.

How is it good for me and some of my friends, players who still played Keg Brawl in its current state and managed to enjoy it, to now only be able to play once every 4 days?? It’s just bullkitten.

And that excuse in and of itself doesn’t make any god kitten ed sense. It relies on the assumption that everyone who likes Keg Brawl is going to like Southsun Survival or Sanctum Sprint, but it’s not the case, since I don’t actually like either of those nearly as much as I like Keg Brawl. Keg brawl is far closer to actual SPvP than Southsun Survival is, since it relies on teamwork. Something that’s missing from both of the above mentioned mini games.

So it’s completely kittened to think that everyone who enjoyed Keg Brawl that can’t play it will go to Southsun for their keg brawl fix? or vice versa, anyone who likes Sanctum Sprint will suddenly be able to play keg Brawl instead? No, that’s not how it works. All it sounds like is you’re dumbing down these mini games to excuses for achievement points. You’re encouraging players to come in and break the content in order to farm it. But providing no means for players to make sure they’re playing with others who actually want to play the mini games, or worse yet, play with their friends. Y’know, the social connections that keep people playing a godkitten ed MMO.

Please ArenaNet, I beseech you to message me and try and justify this garbage. I don’t care if that’s bannable, this is messed up. Like, what in the land of Tyria would convince you that this was a good idea instead of leaving it the way it was? The achievement farmers were bad enough but compared to this, that was far preferred because I could actually go in and play the kitten game.

You can say “if you don’t like it then leave” but like, that would be the only thing to happen. You made a content change so that players could leave your game. Which, no matter how small, is definitely not a good thing when there was no gain from doing this… The only thing this does is let more players know that Keg Brawl exists somewhere in the game, but there were far cheaper and easier ways to do that which don’t kitten off the people who actually found and enjoy it… Maybe take a day where you do a livestream match or something. You give all this attention to SPvP, but I don’t remember ArenaNet challenging PUNT to a match. And I could easily proclaim that PUNT has had the best Keg Brawl players ever to actually be playing it together at any point in time. But no, you take it away from us instead. Where’s the logic?

And they won’t even give any reasoning for it. We should be so lucky. I’m pretty sure they want to avoid posting in this so that it gets buried and no one comes just because of the red post to see their absolute most hilarious kittened game play decision at work.

How do you promise to make more permanent content and then take content that was already permanent and make it temporary!? This probably has larger implications for the rest of the game.

And this absolutely defeats the point of mini games. They’re supposed to be segregated activities done for leisure, not events highlighted so you have the opportunity to get your achievement points.

Please Anet, give me and the OP a reason at least. And one that’s better than a dismissal. I could at least feel better knowing someone could take time out of their day to enlighten me to the magic that is your holy design decisions. Otherwise, I’m under the assumption you just do things to make certain minority player-bases mad just for lulz…

I agree 100% with Serelisk. Having a Mini-game rotation sort of ruins the whole mini-game idea. Players should have a variety of choices on a mini-game to play. Waiting on a timer for a game to be available pushes me away from mini-games. I love the new mini-games like Southsun Survivor or Sanctum Sprint, but waiting a few days to play them depresses me a bit.
Please, bring them back to where you could play them everyday! Thank you.

And don’t even come in here with that loot bag every 30 games bullkitten. If an average Keg brawl game is over in 5 minutes, which is incredibly fast game for normal play, like, a blow out, then you won’t get the loot bag for almost 3 hours of play… and that doesn’t even include the downtime between games.

The OP is completely right too, what happens when you add more mini games. Are you just going to completely cycle out certain mini games or are we gonna have to wait even longer to play our favorite? There’s literally zero positives that come from this for anyone who actually likes any of these mini games.

And in my defense to any would be opponents, the reason why I’m personally only mentioning Keg Brawl is because it’s my favorite mini game. it should drive the point home that I don’t actually care about the others, which is why I and others shouldn’t be disenfranchised because of ArenaNet’s kittened assumption that anyone who likes one mini game will like the other.

Hello again .
I sincerely thank to the group of people here, that actually help to keep this thread up and running. When I created it few hours ago, I was afraid, that it would be lost under the pile of other threads, now it seems to be alive.

I am still waiting for logical answer. What was wrong with Keg Brawl for instance ? Now it has 0 sense and especially it looks wierd in Hoelbrak when you ask Npc next to Keg Brawl pitch, and he is telling you he cannot activate it because others are playing mini-game completly unrelated to specific area. It is quite logical and well ,,real,, when certain minigame fits ,,area,, where it is . That is why I asked about Crabb toss in Southsun

I trully enjoy Sanctum Sprint, but why my need to play this game should limit others ? And why should others limit me in a matter which game should I play ? This trully is in opposite to philosophy ,,play the game how you want,, . Well now I can play limited and with little feeling of being a kittenbag because others cannot do their own. What is the purpouse of this ,,feature,, Is it to provoke community, to create an enormous quarrel ?

If it would be about me, I would simple even agree with 0 rewards for those minigames just to make them not only separate, but also fit onto accurate area. They are a good way to let of some steam with community. Why to limit this ? I seriously hope this is only temporary solution due to some unknow issues.

Just like Serelisk said – fact, that I enjoy Keg Brawl does not mean that I will enjoy other games. There is a reason why most mini games either in single game or MMO are separted and not time-gated, they are created to reach others taste , games not players, because currently it looks as if
Anet was trying to ,,persuade,, players to like them all which is impossible.

We do not have time-gated races,dungeons,classes,crafting classes, why mini-games should be ?

Edit : post edited a bazylion of times just to check what I wrote just in case.
Edit 2 : Thank you Healix about the portal. I thought Southsun Cove is now unaccesable. Silly me.

I agree with Serelisk, this Mini-game rotation just not meant for Keg brawler or any other mini-game as that matter. Please reconsider your decision on the Mini game rotation :[
I don’t want this to be daily bases mini game, I want to play them whenever I want

Keg Brawl had 0 monetary rewards, the achievements were meaningless to those who played the game for fun and enjoyment, and those who played consistently for the sport of it were dedicated to the well-being of the minigame and its community

Why would Anet ever think this would be a good idea? You’re taking the game from its current state and plunging it straight into the ground with this rotation. Instead of getting more support in the form of customization and control over which games you join or maybe a balance patch, the game is instead limited to a timeframe which will most likely be dominated by farmers only looking to get easy achievements and get out.

I loved this game because it was the closest thing I could find to snowball in GW1, which promoted player skill and coordination between players in a small minigame format. Now it’s being reduced (even further) to a farm hotspot and further minimized to not even having its own permanent location

Blumiere.1489:

I trully enjoy Sanctum Sprint, but why my need to play this game should limit others ? And why should others limit me in a matter which game should I play ? This trully is in opposite to philosophy ,,play the game how you want,, . Well now I can play limited and with little feeling of being a kittenbag because others cannot do their own. What is the purpouse of this ,,feature,, Is it to provoke community, to create an enormous quarrel ?

This a thousand times. It makes no sense that others should be disadvantaged. Someone at ArenaNet is trolling, they have to be. There’s 100% negativity in this update. There’s nothing good that comes from this, but very negative things as a result.

Mini-games are an awesome way to take a break from your normal GW2 routine. Why change something that gives your players something to look forward to in the end with the grinding, pveing, pvping and wvwing we all know we do? To put a limit on this is not fair to your loyal players at all.

Oh I will write this in another post. If Anet is afraid that playerbase will thin on servers due to running back and forth to play specific minigames instead of doing quest etc, should Anet just encourage new custumers to try it’s product instead of limiting current playerbase ?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/jubilee/So-EVERYTHING-in-this-patch-is-temporary/first#post2561414

What is see : pernament rotation ? Like seriously I cannot wait for 15 minigames to come be reorganized, and shame if someone only likes one. Really Anet is this Arpil 1st or are you just trolling with us ?

Edit : maybe some day if Anet will introduce housing, maybe we will be able to ,,buy,, from item shop custom minigame and set ,,vendor,, in our home ? That way we could play with firends and guild instead of random people and for the love of Lyssa, please do this AND separate minigames. If you keep rotation, and create custom mini games, I seriously will be mad.

I feel like this also has larger implications than just Keg Brawl also; that seem pretty unprecedented to me. To take out content that’s been in the game for such a long time and make it time gated. What else is gonna get hit with the temp stick for no other reason than to kitten off the current player base?

Healix.5819:

When too many mini-game are available to play at once, the population playing them is spread too thin, causing games to be empty.

This assumes that everyone playing one mini game likes all mini games.
Just because someone really likes keg brawl, does not necessarily mean that person likes aspect arena or any other mini game.This change just makes it so the people who enjoy minigames will only be able to play them for a limited time.

This change also is specifically painful to people who enjoy keg brawl. We already had trouble finding a legitimate match that wasn’t plagued by people boosting for achievements and exploiting, now that there is a limited window of opportunity to play, it may be impossible to get legit match going during that time.

Population dilution is a real problem in MMOs. That is their reason.

I have participated in (depressing) 1v1 Keg Brawls on off-hours, when there is no daily for it. There may be a dedicated fanbase, but it’s tiny and brutally punishing for players who enjoy the activity but play at off-peak hours.

Now with a rotation and (hopefully) a mini-game daily achievement, it will concentrate the population a bit more. Because the fact is a majority of players don’t feel very strongly about one minigame, and this change will concentrate players like this in one spot, making the area much more lively.

This is overall great for the health of the minigame. Now individually, you may not like the changes, but overall it affects many people (like me) very positively. I’m very happy for this change because I love Keg Brawl/Sanctum Sprint/Southsun Survival and I know when they are on, they will be nice and populated.

Crab Toss? Nope. Noooo way. Why no Aspect Arena?

I believe Anet should really to look this over, making mini-games open based on the days would hinder casuals and dedicated players alike.
If I missed a particular mini-game would I have to waiting till next week to play it? It would be beneficial to have the mini-games to be play whenever the players are free, jump-in jump-out without restrictions.
To promote attendance for particular mini-games, Anet should add some reward system, instead of mandating when players can play.

Rewarding Play > Restrictive Play

Ursan.7846:

Population dilution is a real problem in MMOs. That is their reason.

I have participated in (depressing) 1v1 Keg Brawls on off-hours, when there is no daily for it. There may be a dedicated fanbase, but it’s tiny and brutally punishing for players who enjoy the activity but play at off-peak hours.

Now with a rotation and (hopefully) a mini-game daily achievement, it will concentrate the population a bit more. Because the fact is a majority of players don’t feel very strongly about one minigame, and this change will concentrate players like this in one spot, making the area much more lively.

This is overall great for the health of the minigame. Now individually, you may not like the changes, but overall it affects many people (like me) very positively. I’m very happy for this change because I love Keg Brawl/Sanctum Sprint/Southsun Survival and I know when they are on, they will be nice and populated.

Crab Toss? Nope. Noooo way. Why no Aspect Arena?

I’m tired of this argument. It ignores the fact that not everyone who likes one mini game will like the other. So where’s the guarantee that people are even playing these because they like the mini games.

Furthermore, your argument is that you can’t play the game because you can’t be on at certain times of the day to play with the people who do play, nevermidn that I have Keg Brawl guild dedicated to getting people who want to play into games together when they want to. And you somehow think that making it unavailable 75% of the time GW2 is active is a great solution.

Nevermind the fact that people who’ve farmed for achievement poitns have repeatedly used the excuse that time gated content makes it so you virtually have to farm an already over farmed Keg brawl, so it’s likely you STILL won’t be playing against anyone in 5v5 matches.

@Ursan I have asked this : ,, If Anet is afraid that playerbase will thin on servers due to running back and forth to play specific minigames instead of doing quest etc, should Anet just encourage new custumers to try it’s product instead of limiting current playerbase ?,,

I honestly have never seen such thing on MMO . I fully understand festival minigames ( Haloween – Lunatic Inquisition, Winters Day – Snowball Fight etc ), but honestly why this ? If playerbase gets smaller then why not try to limit some dungeons or areas ? Oh I remember long ago, that there was a survey about which rase is played at most and the least. Most of players are playing Humans and if I remember there is a small number of players playing Asura . Should we time-gate this ? Why not professions or even lands visited ?

It is a schame Anet should understand that it is players that create this world and the players should create their ,,schedule,, of activities not developers. I am one type of players that does things randomly and sometimes I do things when I fell that ,,today is the day,, . What a bummer – going to join some minigame just to see sign ,,pitch,land,track closed due to cleaning,,.

Edit : Still waiting for an explanation.

Also, there’s still huge bugs and problems with the game that have existed since launch. Maybe more people would like to play Keg Brawl if they could at the very least play with their kittening friends. On top of that simple issues like players being able to leave the arena at all or the fact that Guardian aegis from Virtue of Courage is still active. There’s many more from movement impairing glitches, to Keg brawl being notoriously laggier than any other part of the game frequently.

And there’s still no reward except 200 achievement points and now a loot bag every 30 games which is laughable cause that’s gonna encourage something akin to another red resign if there’s anything good in there. There’s not even Keg Brawl themed PvP finishers or special /rank emote even? These can’t be that hard to implement but even if they are, there’s still near-game breaking issues that aren’t addressed.

People who will be playign keg brawl in the daily rotation won’t be there because they like Keg brawl as a game, and it seems like Anet welcomes this.

For those of you that don’t know what red resign is, in GW1 there were dailies for the game in the form of Zaishen Quests, and they woudl reward for doing something in the game. There was hero battles and the reward was a Zaishen Key which would allow a chance of RNG to get some really cool rewards or you could sell them for 5 plat, the rough guild wars 2 equivalent of 4-5g.

If one team resigned giving up the match and you have a 50% chance of getting thrown on either side, you could get a Zaishen key repeatedly in roughly 6 games that lasted some 20 seconds each, the resign and the time to restart the match. So would be getting a ton of gold or chances to get rare items in a really short amount of time b not playing the content but exploiting it.

I’m just pointing out that these are the potential issues since those who only want those achievement points or loot bags don’t typically care about the gameplay and will exploit the hell out of it. With the ability to spawn kegs at will by taking them out of the arena, as well as lobbing (scoring from the middle of the Arena) and willignness to just farm matches, one team could just score for red or blue everytime because they get rewarded regardless of the outcome. Just as well, those who just want intercepts can do that too since they only need 1 keg and the rest of the process is extremely quick.

ArenaNet is setting this game up for kitten. I don’t know how the rest of the mini games can be exploited, but farmers never fail to find a way.

Serelisk.6573:

I’m tired of this argument. It ignores the fact that not everyone who likes one mini game will like the other. So where’s the guarantee that people are even playing these because they like the mini games.

No, but people of all types exist. Obviously some people are dedicated to one game. There are others who like all of them, a few of them, most of them, etc.

Serelisk.6573:

Furthermore, your argument is that you can’t play the game because you can’t be on at certain times of the day to play with the people who do play, nevermidn that I have Keg Brawl guild dedicated to getting people who want to play into games together when they want to. And you somehow think that making it unavailable 75% of the time GW2 is active is a great solution.

I’m just telling you what Anet’s reasoning is. While it’s great that you’re so dedicated to this minigame, there are plenty of others who aren’t as dedicated, and the limited time factor combined with achievements provide many them with that motivation to play. And that’s great for the health of the minigame. It’s like McDonald’s McRib, or Taco Bell’s Beefy Crunch Tacos.

Of course there are downsides. As you mention, the truly dedicated players can’t access it 24/7. But Anet definitely has some good reasons for doing so. You asked what their reasoning was, I’m simply answering.

Blumiere.1489:

@Ursan I have asked this : ,, If Anet is afraid that playerbase will thin on servers due to running back and forth to play specific minigames instead of doing quest etc, should Anet just encourage new custumers to try it’s product instead of limiting current playerbase ?,,

It is encouraging players to try it. The act of limiting access motivates people. This is a tried-and-true marketing strategy. i.e. McRib/Beefy Crunch.

Blumiere.1489:

It is a schame Anet should understand that it is players that create this world and the players should create their ,,schedule,, of activities not developers. I am one type of players that does things randomly and sometimes I do things when I fell that ,,today is the day,, . What a bummer – going to join some minigame just to see sign ,,pitch,land,track closed due to cleaning,,.

And if every player did what they wanted, minigames would be a wasteland. MMOs are a to a certain extent social engineering platforms. To ensure a healthy, active population in an area, Anet needs to give a little bit of motivation for the majority of casuals to give content X their player-hours. The limited-time approach with the combination of achievements does exactly that.

Blumiere.1489:

Edit : Still waiting for an explanation.

I mean…

I gave you their explanation. You can choose to disagree with it, but it’s there. They want to avoid population dilution, which is a real problem in MMOs, hence they make things limited.

In any argument about game design, the one assumption you can always make safely is that game developers want gamers to play what they designed. In this case, Anet is giving a little extra motivation for people to play minigames. I’ll be looking forward tonight, when I can expect some good Keg Brawl matches.

EDIT: I like to stress again that I’m not really trying to argue to try to convince you, but to simply lay out the reasons why Anet made these changes, and to present a viewpoint from someone who’s benefiting positively from these changes.

@Ursan, your repeated argument also relies on the assumption that there’s no other way to avoid population dilution or get people to play these mini games.

You also ignored the potential for Keg brawl to continued to be used expressly for farmers to get achievement points, allowing people no other way to play with people who actually want to play. Something that has already happened and has been said repeatedly by those who participate that way that time limited contents gives no other choice but for them to abuse the game in order to get the achievements they want as fast as possible. And this ruins the experience for even casual players of Keg brawl I’m sure.

It’s not that I simply disagree with the reasoning, the reasoning doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. You’re actually trying to tell me that only being able to play it on certain days will guarantee that people will suddenly like Keg Brawl or atleast play it normally, even if they’re only there for the rewards (note: Keg brawl has a huge boosting problem that Anet has not addressed). And what was the difference than just having a daily every 4 days instead of taking it away from everyone for 3/4 days? You yourself said it’s only barren on off-hours when it’s not the daily.

They haven’t even attempted to make Keg brawl appealing, many people (especially those who farm it) have been vocal about how broken/unplayable the game is in it’s current state so it doesn’t bother them to exploit it. It hasn’t had an actual update since launch, just a single update somewhere in October or November that made it so lobbing had a 1 second casting time… This is not how you encourage people to play a game.

So your analogy to mcRib and Beef Crunch doesn’t hold because those are premiere products, they’re more enticing as a product than the other stuff on the menu. Furthermore, I’m pretty sure they’re not for the person who comes to Mickey D’s everyday or the Taco Bell fanatic (regular GW2 players), they’re for the people who occasionally or have never eaten at that establishment (non-GW2 players). So instead of broadening the player base, they’re restricting people who already play.

And because “player dilution” is not problem in restaurants, since I’m pretty sure someone coming to the drive thru don’t care whether their friends eat that specific item off the menu or not; your only example is ridiculously misplaced and doesn’t do anything to explain your statement.

Ursan.7846:

EDIT: I like to stress again that I’m not really trying to argue to try to convince you, but to simply lay out the reasons why Anet made these changes, and to present a viewpoint from someone who’s benefiting positively from these changes.

You’ve only said that it benefits you positively, but you haven’t provided any explanation of how this is the best they could do with this system, or is better than what was there previously… So you just saying it benefits you positively isn’t quite doing anything for me since you haven’t given me reason to believe that and I’ve got plenty of reasons to think otherwise. There were already dailies to draw those who’re looking for rewards, you said yourself that there were days where the games would be good.

The only difference between that and this is that I now can’t play on off days, so I’m forced to play on those specific days, which in my personal opinion, causes a heavy amount of resentment considering I really can not play on those days all the time anyway. So even if I and others like me enjoy Keg brawl, I can’t imagine they’d all have schedules that magically line up with ArenaNets visions of who should play what and when.

I’ll just briefly summarize my point of view on this topic as elaborated on in this thread since I’m sure many people didn’t read most of what I wrote.

I think it is wrong that ArenaNet is going this route. They’re restricting access to the game, supposedly because of the fear of population dilution, but I don’t believe that’s a reasonable answer to it. The mini games are about variety of game play experiences. Not everyone is going to like every mini game, and it’s wrong to try and persuade the player base to do so with time limited content.

If they want more people to play the mini games, they should be putting in a stronger effort to make the mini games more appealing, instead of wrongfully taking them away from the people that enjoy them now.

Yeah, Anet dun goofed. I agree with Serelisk and the op

I think Anet knows exactly how many people like/play keg brawl on days that it’s not a daily. In fact, I think Anet knows exactly how many people exploit keg brawl to get their achievement points without playing it. It happens all the time. I go to play a game and two people grab a keg, jump out of bounds and toss it back and forth. Some fun.

Because they have the data of how many people are affected by this decision and no one else does, I can’t really side with you, OP.

I daresay SAB was a whole lot more popular than Keg Brawl and that was temporary. Keg Brawl would have to be completely reworked to be a game worthy of a personal slot. For one thing, it would have to be changed to prevent the prevalent cheating that continually occurs there. That takes dev time.

So if their metrics don’t show enough people play it the way it was intended to be played, they don’t necessarily have reason to put time and effort into fixing it.

Business decision is a business decision. Sometimes individuals don’t like it, but I don’t think there are enough people in that boat to affect the decision.

I understand that, but it doesn’t make sense to limit it from people who’re playing anyway if their purpose was to keep people from exploiting it. That’s actually very likely to make the problem of exploiters/boosters worse.

The SAB isn’t a very fair comparison considering it got out of game promotion in the form of a trailer, plus it was literally the theme of the content update. It was posted about in gaming sites everywhere, and was the topic of a ton of forum posts because it was something big. There’s a lot of people who don’t even know where Keg brawl is because it’s not really explained or incentivized beyond the daily achievement.

Keg brawl has been around since the beginning. SAB was a month long event that Anet spent countless hours into developing and promoting, making sure it would (at the very least) be the top priority for existing GW2 players to try. The rewards from SAB were skins that sold for decent amounts of money, achievement points, and other things that linked to the ‘real game’. It was a limited time event, so players who wanted the above rewards HAD to play it during the month it was available or be locked out forever. Of course it would get more attention, there is no comparison between SAB and Keg Brawl seeing that KB has been the small mini game that has no promotion and would be around forever (until this update atleast). I didn’t think twice about trying it myself until I was bored to tears one night with a friend and gave it a go out of the blue.

Serelisk.6573:

I understand that, but it doesn’t make sense to limit it from people who’re playing anyway if their purpose was to keep people from exploiting it. That’s actually very likely to make the problem of exploiters/boosters worse.

The SAB isn’t a very fair comparison considering it got out of game promotion in the form of a trailer, plus it was literally the theme of the content update. It was posted about in gaming sites everywhere, and was the topic of a ton of forum posts because it was something big. There’s a lot of people who don’t even know where Keg brawl is because it’s not really explained or incentivized beyond the daily achievement.

Well at very least then, people will learn about keg brawl from this.

Never played keg brawl before, never even heard of it or knew where to find it. Now that it is in the rotation I will probably try it out since it is easier to access.

Seems like a great change to me. no one I talked o had ever heard of this game before… has it really been in since launch?

Right, except they could’ve explored cheaper and less offensive ways of doing so. Like posting on their official facebook page about Keg Brawl or highlighting the activity on the main page once in its lifetime. But none of that happened.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Never played keg brawl before, never even heard of it or knew where to find it. Now that it is in the rotation I will probably try it out since it is easier to access.

Seems like a great change to me. no one I talked o had ever heard of this game before… has it really been in since launch?

Yes, it’s been in since beta in fact. And this change is not great, since before, you could’ve played Keg Brawl whenever you wanted. It’s in part your ignorance for not seeing it the numerous times it’s been a part of the daily, and ArenaNet’s issue of not acknowledging that it existed at all after launch some year ago.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Never played keg brawl before, never even heard of it or knew where to find it. Now that it is in the rotation I will probably try it out since it is easier to access.

Seems like a great change to me. no one I talked o had ever heard of this game before… has it really been in since launch?

Yep, I played it pretty much the first day, since Anet had talked about it before launch. It was better back then, before the achievement hounds came in and ruined it. It’s hard to find a game that’s being played honestly anymore.

I think it’ll be better to play it when there are lots of people playing it…which is an over all improvement.

What makes you think the income of people will be genuinely interested in playing actual games? Knowing the current GW2 population people will learn about KB and immediately want to farm it because they see everyone else farming it. I didn’t even know about the Loot Bag rewards and this will only add to the problem. Pretty much the nail in the coffin, seeing as they have easy access to both loot and achievement points if they decide to say screw it to actually participating in the games as intended

I honestly can’t understand the reasons behind this decision. I’m am mostly likely going to stop playing Gw2 now since i cant play keg brawl. That was the only fun thing left in the game for me. I have completed all of the nonexistent end game that gw2 presented and spent hundreds of hours in WvW. Now they took away the only actual fun game with great replay value. Southsun Survival was fun the first 10 times. After that i wanted to slit my wrists when i tried to play it. Keg Brawl was great because it required actual skill and teamwork and was completely balanced. They didnt give Keg brawl the light of day when everyone was achievement farming, ruining the game. They also havent fixed the game breaking mechanic of the lob thats been around since beta. If Arena net just simply advertised keg brawl at least once on any kind of social media or website, the game would have thousands of more players, since the game is fantastic. 3/4 of gw2 player base dooesnt even know keg brawl existed. The only thing i would be ok with is if they implement the permanent version after this patch, therefore using this patch to raise the awareness of Keg Brawl. They tried to put it in the daily achieves but all that did was encourage achieve farmers. Ive spent countless hours in Keg Brawl and then i log on today and find out that i cant play it anymore. Thats just messed up. It was already permanent, why couldnt they keep the permanent version and still put it in the rotation? There are countless fixed to this problem and they chose the worst possible one aside from straight getting rid of keg brawl. I would love an actual reason for why they did this

Kylar.5127:

I would love an actual reason for why they did this

The only reason anyone can even attempt to give is player dilution, but there’s a lot of holes in that logic as I’ve pointed out in this thread multiple times.

Here to voice my disappointment in the limiting of Keg Brawl and other activities. I can’t believe they would make an activity, that was from release consistently available, limited like this. It seems like a massive step backwards in design. What terrible idea will crop up next? Only having one dungeon open per day? Only having one WvW map open per day? Only having one sPvP map open per day? Only having one open world map open per day? Only having one Server open per day?

None of those make any sense at all, who in their right mind would think this change is improving the game?

Serelisk.6573:

You’ve only said that it benefits you positively, but you haven’t provided any explanation of how this is the best they could do with this system, or is better than what was there previously… So you just saying it benefits you positively isn’t quite doing anything for me since you haven’t given me reason to believe that and I’ve got plenty of reasons to think otherwise. There were already dailies to draw those who’re looking for rewards, you said yourself that there were days where the games would be good.

It’s great for motivating me to care about mini games without making it too much of a chore. 4 minigame dailies would be a tad too overbearing and be a turn-off to many people. But if they’re not a daily, then there is no time-limiting factor to really coerce people to play.

This is their reasoning. It benefits me, because I’ll be able to have fun 3/4th of the day (not Crab Toss) instead of almost never having fun due to low population. It’s understandable why you’d be upset and why you can’t understand my joy at this change. However, I do benefit.

All I got to say is I miss the variety of mini-games and just havin fun. Hope the open games come back, i sure miss playing mini-games

Ursan.7846:

Serelisk.6573:

You’ve only said that it benefits you positively, but you haven’t provided any explanation of how this is the best they could do with this system, or is better than what was there previously… So you just saying it benefits you positively isn’t quite doing anything for me since you haven’t given me reason to believe that and I’ve got plenty of reasons to think otherwise. There were already dailies to draw those who’re looking for rewards, you said yourself that there were days where the games would be good.

It’s great for motivating me to care about mini games without making it too much of a chore. 4 minigame dailies would be a tad too overbearing and be a turn-off to many people. But if they’re not a daily, then there is no time-limiting factor to really coerce people to play.

This is their reasoning. It benefits me, because I’ll be able to have fun 3/4th of the day (not Crab Toss) instead of almost never having fun due to low population. It’s understandable why you’d be upset and why you can’t understand my joy at this change. However, I do benefit.

I don’t know about others, but I’m not accepting this explanation because it still doesn’t make sense.

4 mini game dailies are overbearing? If you enjoy the mini game anyway, then why’s it a problem to have a rotation of dailies for mini games? It’s encouragement, rather than force. Force, in most situations, causes far more resentment than encouraging does. It’s why the dailies are the way they are in the rest of GW2 where players are encouraged to log in to receive limited impact/cosmetic rewards for playing the game, as opposed to similar systems in other MMO’s where players feel forced to log in and complete their to-do list.

Also, the “low-population” bit relies on both assumptions that this will actually happen, since we haven’t seen all the mini games on together yet, and ignoring of the fact that these mini games do not have enough promotion, support, or incentive to be as populated as the rest of the game. ArenaNet has spent the last 4 months or more developing virtually nothing but reward systems for this game, from WvW to dungeon revamps, and living story specific skins to achievement chest rewards, but there’s not a single Keg brawl, Crab Toss, Southsun Survival, or Sanctum Sprint themed reward in the game besides the titles.

You keep saying you understand, but you apparently don’t. Your experiences with Keg Brawl is not any indication at all of player dilution. The entire premise of ‘less things to play = more people playing this one thing’ (which is also flawed), doesn’t hold weight because you could’ve potentially had all the mini games functioning all the time with their own dedicated fan base for each.

If there is a player dilution, then whole Gw2 playerbase can only dream of visiting Cantha or Elona in the future, since there either might be a small playerbase to play new content or they will thin out previous areas. But is it a fault of playerbase or something is wrong with promoting the game ?

They could always try to create some underlow servers, like anything, but limiting content. I said previously, a survey showed that Asura race is the least played race in game, should Anet set specific days when other races will be blocked just to make us ,,like,, Asuras ?

Come to think of it, I have not seen an actuall information on forum about minigames, that actually promotes them. And the current solution still will not solve the problem since achievement hunters will only play those games for achievement. After fulfilling the task they will jump to quest/farm/dungeon run, instead of chilling on some mini-game. This only makes them to wait x amount of days, thinking that people will react ,,ooohh since I am waiting for my mini-game I will try others , maybe I will start liking them and caring for them wweeeee,, is actually naive approach.

For the same population, with 4 mini games as opposed to one, dilution will occur by definition. This is a fact, not some subjective assumption. However, the severity of it is something we don’t truly know and something I based completely on personal experience. Only Anet can answer the true extent of the dilution.

You’re not accepting it or understanding it because you make the assumption that the dilution is not as severe as Anet thinks it is. That’s fine. It still doesn’t change the fact that it is their reason why.

Ursan.7846:

For the same population, with 4 mini games as opposed to one, dilution will occur by definition. This is a fact, not some subjective assumption. However, the severity of it is something we don’t truly know and something I based completely on personal experience. Only Anet can answer the true extent of the dilution.

Again, this relies on the assumption that there’s a fixed audience for people who like mini games. Not Keg Brawl, not Crab Toss, not Sanctum Sprint, or Southsun Survival, but mini games. It is saying that this is a demographic of players who like to play these four games. This is not true. Mini games are such varied game experiences, that someone who likes Southsun Survival could very well not like Crab Toss and Keg Brawl.

A similar argument would’ve been (when SPvP wasn’t popular) that WvW was siphoning all the potential SPvP players because of player dilution, so the only option to increase those numbers would be to have specific days where WvW was disabled, thereby making all those players go to SPvP instead. They have different audiences, they’re different games.

You’re not accepting it or understanding it because you make the assumption that the dilution is not as severe as Anet thinks it is. That’s fine. It still doesn’t change the fact that it is their reason why.

No, I don’t think the dilution is severe as Anet (according to you) thinks it is. Because you know what they did to SPvP? They made it appealing! They added automated tournaments, more reward systems to encourage play, they had state of the games almost every week if not every week, they added custom arenas! Observer mode! They have forums that promote the formation of new teams as well as partnerships with other media sites to host larger viewer live streams of paid tournaments.

My point is that maybe if they actually tried to make their games appealing, instead of bug ridden and filled with game breaking mechanics, then the potential for player dilution would be significantly less if you actually have a bit of content a lot of people want to play.

You’re ignoring things I’ve already said. This may be their reason why, but it still makes no sense and has no inherent positives.

Ursan, yesterday it was Sanctum Sprint, today is Southsun Survival which I like in a moderate taste. Do you seriously think I will jump there while waiting for other mini-games to come ? Is it my fault I have restricted taste ? There are players that play one race or profession for instance only, should we limit them ? What about areas, apparently it seems that Queensdale is the most visited, while Orr is deserted, Why not to limit Queensdale playerbase to make them move their backs and go there ?

Serelisk is right : no wonder the community knows little about them, since mini-games are not actually promoted even on forums. and the fact they might appear to be bugged makes them only a niusance rather than content compatybile to the game.

Allow me to be ignorant, until I hear the Anet statement, because even now Ursan you are still giving the assumption that is only based on your personal experience. We both give assumptions we just made them on different thinking process.

Serelisk.6573:

Again, this relies on the assumption that there’s a fixed audience for people who like mini games. Not Keg Brawl, not Crab Toss, not Sanctum Sprint, or Southsun Survival, but mini games. It is saying that this is a demographic of players who like to play these four games. This is not true. Mini games are such varied game experiences, that someone who likes Southsun Survival could very well not like Crab Toss and Keg Brawl.

Your arguments bug me very much because you insist on dealing with absolutes. Only the Sith do that.

No, obviously not everyone likes all 4 minigames. I never say that. However, as long as a portion of the player base enjoys multiple minigames (this is a fact), dilution will occur by definition.

Anet wants every area of their world to have a critical concentration of players. Because below this threshold, certain events become downright unfun due to the low population. This doesn’t only apply to minigames, this reasoning colors a lot of their decisions, such as World Bosses rewarding rares to encourage people to visit low-areas instead of Orr, and their recent dungeon reward change.

You can disagree with their solution. You can proposed what you think are better solutions (If you note, I never disgreed with any of your alternative solutions). But I must admit, the vigor with which you deny the REASON is somewhat confusing. Fear of player dilution is their reason, and I’m informing you of it.

You forgot the part where you attempted to explain or defend your claim that this is a benefit to you versus the previous system, implicitly justifying ArenaNet’s decision with the supposed support of certain types of players who will certainly benefit a lot from this system.

But your entire defense was based on the assumption that player dilution is a definite, and will inevitably negatively impact the individual mini games to a point of unplayability unless you only allow players to play one of each a day.

Your only example thus far, as it relates to mini games, is Keg Brawl, but its state is most certainly not a result of the ‘mini-game crowd’ being spread too thin since, for the longest time it has had population problems but has been the only active mini game in GW2.

I’ve long since accepted that ArenaNet could have very well decided that they’re going to make this move out of fear of player dilution, but at this stage, it reflects wholly negatively on them for not trying at all to mitigate or remove that fear before disadvantaging or driving players away entirely. Not to mention they’ve still done nothing about the farmers, so alert & prepare your local neighborhood for all the boosting that’s gonna happen on KB day.

There’s no way this update can be twisted as a positive, because it indicates that ArenaNet is not going to support their mini games at all or even attempt to broaden support for them. Rather, they’ll just restrict or marginalize the current player base, potentially driving off people from the game itself.

Serelisk.6573:

You forgot the part where you attempted to explain or defend your claim that this is a benefit to you versus the previous system, implicitly justifying ArenaNet’s decision with the supposed support of certain types of players who will certainly benefit a lot from this system.

This isn’t me disagreeing with your proposed alternate solutions. This is simply me informing you what Anet’s reasoning is, and offering myself as an example of someone who explicitly benefits from their solution. I appreciate this discussion, but I would appreciate it more if you’d stop trying to twist my words. Your constant attempt at strawman-ing my position is somewhat exasperating.

Serelisk.6573:

But your entire defense was based on the assumption that player dilution is a definite, and will inevitably negatively impact the individual mini games to a point of unplayability unless you only allow players to play one of each a day.

Player dilution is definite. This is not an assumption. This is a fact.

Player dilution in itself isn’t a problem. It’s whether it leads to too low of a player concentration in certain areas of the game. Then it becomes a problem. Whether it’s bad enough is a complete assumption for both of us, since we’re not Anet. Again, I just base my assumption on my own personal experience. Is everyone else’s experience the same? Definitely not. However, I do exist.