Mordrem Invasion Update: 11 September 12:30 PM

Mordrem Invasion Update: 11 September 12:30 PM

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Posted by: ReaverKane.7598

ReaverKane.7598

  • The actual rewards (the items in vendor) cost too much for such a short term event.
  • No in-between rewards (Event champs don’t drop, mobs don’t drop, don’t count for killstreak, etc.)
  • Poor scaling, the individual events are stuck on a small scale, which means that you really have to run around like a headless chicken trying to hit mobs at least once just to tag participation.
  • Rewarding individual performance, on such an event, specially one where you wanted to involve guilds is poor planning. Would be much better for the overal reward to be based on global map performance, which would get people to organize instead of people just running around trying to tag up as many events possible.

I was feeling really positive about the game as of late, but this reminded me too much of recent mistakes that keep happening, and makes me wonder if HoT won’t be riddled with these as well. I’m hoping this was an event drafted by a single dev on his free time, like the WvW Golem Rush one, otherwise this doesn’t really bode well.

Btw what’s going to happen? The time limit is still in effect? The Event will be extended or postponed to be done at a later time after its fixed?

(edited by ReaverKane.7598)

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Posted by: Motty.9821

Motty.9821

For me, I’m one of those people that can do the grind tag and bag ‘selfish’ playstyle. I find farming silverwastes actually entertaining and fun, very rewarding. But the thing is even if I farm it ‘selfishly’ I will still go way out of my way to res a down/dead player, or run back to an event i already tagged if it needs help to successfully complete, or stop and help explain how to do something.

You can’t do that here. 20 events in 30 minutes, assuming it takes 30 seconds-45 seconds to run between them it’s having to get your tags in 15-30 seconds before leaving and going to the next one. And then everyone does this, because 10 blooms is such a mediocre reward and in order not to spend countless more hours, 15 blooms helps shave it off a little bit. Sorry clearly new, level 27 player that downed at my feet, I have no time to get you! Then of course, there’s the chance that you spend 15 minutes of your time madly wping and doing the stressful/tedious/chaotic notion of trying to tag more events and at the very end 5 of the events you tagged never completed leaving you at 19 stacks, the same reward for 10 stacks that you had 15 minutes ago.

What would have been better is to extend it to last 45 minutes instead of 30. I manage to get 20 stacks with 5min-30s left on the event, while my poor party members are at 8-14 stacks going “Wait you can leave before the event finishes?? How do you even GET that many?”

As much as I hate it, how much it actually stresses and ticks me off “Get your dead body off the bombs so we can finish! Hold the catapult until its 100% charged!! KILL THE SHIELD GENERATORS FIRST GOD.” I’m still going to grind my face against it because I wasn’t online during the Battle for Lion’s Arch and I’m GOING to get me a halo whether I like it or not. No really, I was so stoked that the potions were brought back, and the scarlet/toxic skins are nice to those players who couldn’t afford the gems for them. The thing is realistically, unless you literally eat/sleep/breathe gw2, you won’t be able to get much. People have 8-10 hour jobs, have kids to take care of, homework, class, lives—this doesn’t cater to them that well.

Now if it maxed out at maybe.. 5 stacks instead, with 5 blooms per stack at a total of 25, and a small reward given at the end of each event like silverwastes to give an incentive to actually continue doing events to help out those who haven’t gotten their stacks or came late, it’d be a lot better imo. Or just lower the stack count in general if you wanted to keep the max reward at 15, make it 15+ stacks for 15 blooms. Just anything to give a bit more time to get the max reward so that players who regularly farm and know how to go about it can still help the people who don’t. (ie that one level 22 guy that keeps getting 1 shot in aoe)

I’m still glad I get another chance to get the potion, the actual merchant rewards are nice (for the most part) it’s just I think having to farm a kittenload (450 for a potion, goodluck if you want a potion and a gauntlet skin) is asking too much for a little weekend event. I’d expect rewards like this to come from.. Well where they came from—large events like the battle for lion’s arch with achievements, other things to do, titles, etc. Not from an ‘exciting’ little weekend event. It’s asking too much in too little time. Not asking to make getting the higher end rewards easier, I paid gems for my skins and my friends farmed hard for their potions when they first appeared in 2014—but you should really think about time restraints on these things for the ‘average’ player. But yay, still hanging on to the happiness of being able to get a second chance at my potion !

These are things obviously already said but, I just feel ‘thoughtless’ (lel) for having to give new players the finger while I do it. “None of you could res?” — “If you’re dead wp.” but alas my needs are greater than my want to press f on people.

edit— holy cow thats long

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Posted by: Pretty Pixie.8603

Pretty Pixie.8603

As others have noted, this is an extremely poor event to introduce new players to. There are no rewards for events, participation is restrictive, and a new player is totally unable to purchase a decent reward. I ended up sending gold to guildies so they could get a skin.

If Anet is targeting this at new players and guild participation, then there should be reason for them to participate. There is none. In the worst case they spend the weekend grinding and discovering at the end that the rewards will be out of their reach, and will be for months. A level 20 will not have 10g to spend by doing an event that doesn’t reward gold.

Flesh Wound is right in his assessment that it looks like the primary consideration was impact on the economy over fun. This needs to be addressed afterwards if you don’t want to leave new players with a sour taste in their mouths.

Relentless Inquisition [PAIN] – FA

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Posted by: Fatherbliss.4701

Fatherbliss.4701

Feedback:

People want to do events. Regardless of all the complaints, I still see very full maps and the majority of my friend list is also doing the event. Part of that is due to the nature of the timer period we are in now, between the announcement of the expansion and the actual release date.

I believe the rewards are fine. I’m actually excited by some of the items and have been working towards obtaining the Toxic items I missed previously. (Not even sure why I don’t have them to be honest!) A number of my guild mates are interested in the Selfless and Thoughtless potions. So well done there.

Considering that Free To Play was just recently announced, this would have been a great experience for new players to really see the community come together. I understand the reasoning behind limited drop rates, gating content and ensuring the this isn’t yet another loot farm. However, a delicate balance must be maintained between being rewarding and trying to curb players farming an instance.

Within a 30 minute window, you can absolutely do a number of events all the way to completion especially with a large group. I’d make an internal criteria of needing to hit Gold level for a maximum reward, Silver for a mid-range and Copper would earn the bare minimum. Blooms would be rewarded based on completion of an event. Damage done to the boss would be one avenue to make that possible. Rewards should be gated even further to encourage players using the mechanic involved with each boss. I imagine that is happening now to some degree, but I shouldn’t be able to hit a boss once and still get credit.

There has to be a way to solve the zerg mentality, without punishing new players and also to spread out the rewards on a wider scale without grinding. This event absolutely encourages grinding, which is something that GW2 isn’t about.

Leader of Goats of Thunder [GOAT]
Tarnished Coast: Bringing the Butter to you (no pants allowed)

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Posted by: Jalarien.7410

Jalarien.7410

I think the reddit.com thread “this event is a frantic stressful mess” hit the nail on the head.

What i like: different mordrem events, the locations chosen were picturesque the distance between them was fair. Apart from some scaling issues (which made it more advantageous for geared people with all the waypoint unlocked) the overall mechanics and gameplay of the event was nice.

However the design of this event was terrible. Because it was an event for newbies and people without guilds, I feel like this event failed even harder because it made people play in a way that was anti gw2.

No map wide bonus that encourages people to not act selfishly. This meant it was every person for themselves. Thus newbies fared worse than vets, which is not a desired outcome. The reason why newbies struggled is because they had to waypoint to get tags, spending silver. They also did less damage to mobs.

No progression while killing stuff. I know this was taken out to prevent farming. But it is also incentive to stay in one spot and kill the mobs giving loot. You could have taken champ bags out but at least given exp silver and karma, things a newbie needs.

Scaling was so bad it encouraged people to tag and run. This put more pressure on the use of waypoints to get around faster, and therefore disadvantaged newbies.

No reward if dc. Pretty self explanatory, but this problem has been around since world boss daily chests, so I won’t go into it here.

In all, vets expected more because over the past three years, you have shown us that you are capable of designing thoughtful events. You must have in mind the lowest common denominator/s. Here it was the tag and run mentality. I recognise that taking rewards out for killing mobs was taken out to stop the zerg and scale mentality, but it just hurt newbies, your target demographic, who is both poor and needs xp. Solution would have been to not have it scale up to champions.

To address the tag and run mentality you need map wide bonuses like in Save lion’s arch, crown pavilion and dry top.

If you think that’s being too conservative, I have a suggestion for design.

Another fair way to address tag and run is to lock all waypoints, have everyone start from the Morden vendor, and make it a good thing that you must get as far as possible. Thus, have easy events near the vendor, scale up harder in the far end of the map. And then the zerg will have to split up and eventually rejoin at the other side. If we beat all the events we get x. If we fail, we get y. This way it is not productive to tag and run, but it is helpful for people to push ahead for the rest of the map.

Ok that is all, I hope you enjoy reading my feedback.

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Posted by: Jaken.6801

Jaken.6801

Wait, this is a multi stage event? Each map in the rotation is another stage?
Or did I read that wrong?

I really want to know what their goal was with this event, because it just feels as stale as any of the vents they put out two years ago. I thought they had outgrown that phase.

I mean, recycling events (holidays cough ) is nothing new, but this as an new player recruitment event is very disapointing.

(also, feedback is allready in the other thread and already said enough here, so nothing more from me)

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Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

And the forum daily login ate my post.

If this event was meant to introduce new players, P4F or otherwise, a taste of such events, the rewards offered aren’t that useful to a new player.

  • The Crate of Sand and Arid Dusty Satchel gives rewards that are only useful in the Maguma Wastes.
  • 50 Luck for 10 blooms and 2+ silver. Salvage green drops and you can get one with less effort.
  • Memories of Scarlet Box is actually useful at 20 and 25 silver. But how often can you buy what gets dropped for less than 25 silver. Yes you can get blade shards. And I’ve only opened three from map completes but nothing I would be willing to spend 25 silver on.
  • Mysterious Key Pouch. Now if they know they need to pick one of each, can access LA and figure out where the chest is, it might be worth the 45 silver and 75 blooms.
  • Figuring out the worth of a bloom based on the UniDye? About 2 silver each.
  • Bag of Rare Gear uses RNG to determine what you get and there’s a chance for an exotic. Probably not a high enough of a chance to make it worth the RNG rolls.

Also unlike veteran players, new players are coin poor. So charging them on top of not offering many items that are immediately useful isn’t really a reward.

As for the top tier rewards, the skins and potions are very expensive relative to the average blooms from each map event, informal poll among teammates is 15. At 900 for all the skins or both potions would require a player to 4 rotations through all 3 maps every day. That’s 15 hours! A day! Drops to 11 hours if they average 20 per map. That’s insane and you know ANet that there are players who will feel compelled to do it because we as players have no idea when these items will ever return. And if they return before the end of the year there will be players very upset from burning themselves out on this weekend to get it.

TL;DR Low end rewards aren’t as useful for new players and drains the little coin they have, high end rewards require play during every waking hour for four days.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

(edited by Behellagh.1468)

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Posted by: Eley.1380

Eley.1380

These points were already mentioned pretty much so i can only repeat them.

-There is nothing to keep you interested some loot would be nice(don’t turn it into a farming zerg) or as time goes increase the invasion’s intenstiy with different phases maybe a big boss at the end too.

-The reward system is selfish it’s encourage to just tag and run to the next event, it should be based on the whole map’s performance, do an equal map wide reward.

-The 30 minute downtime between maps is too long, the long break after the 3 maps is fine and needed.

-More event variety would be nice.

-Because how quicly enemies die and the reward-reward price ratio i don’t think it’s easy or fun for new players also it’s not really rewarding for anybody and the majority of the players don’t have time for this all day.

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Posted by: DemonNinja.1602

DemonNinja.1602

I appreciate the openness about the feedback you are getting on this event. It speaks bounds to the continued strives to be more communicative from the development team and the community team. So props to that!

My problems with the event:

1. It promotes leeching, and not actually doing the events. The currency rewards are tiered in a way that in order to get the maximum you need to have 20+ stacks on you, and in order to accomplish this you literally just have to run from event to event tagging them to get credit and moving on to the next one. You don’t actually get to play the event like in the previous events such as Scarlet.

2. No loot table on the monsters. The ONLY reward you get for 30 min of you game time is a few tokens for items that already exist within the game. It just isn’t worth it. I could farm gold faster in other parts of the game and purchase the items on the reward vendor (save the BLTP items) much more quickly by not doing the event.

3. No experience. With so many new players joining the game – I think this was the largest and must fundamental flaw of this event’s design. These players are working hard to get caught up in level and content to be ready for the release of the expansion – and their very first event doesn’t even give them experience. How much of a massive let down would that be.

4. Its grindy. No treadmills in this game – unless you want something cool.

5. No new loot. OK, I like the fact that we have another opportunity to acquire things from the past. But through in a couple of new things – a tonic – soup it up. This was just viewed as laziness in my eyes.

The risk/reward just isn’t present in the event. It promotes leeching and tagging rather than actually playing the game, what a concept. Lastly its lack of rewards and experience make it almost pointless for new players to participate in.

Aerilon Starsider
Elementalist Extraordinaire
http://twitch.tv/dustydemonninja

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Posted by: Serophous.9085

Serophous.9085

We have been tracking player response and recognize that this event has not gone as intended. We’re at a point where we can’t change anything more about this event for this weekend without risk to the greater portion of the game. We also are going to postpone our plans to organize an in-game event around the Mordrem Invasion this afternoon. Instead, we’re going to continue to monitor for your feedback and collect information that will help us improve on these types of events going forward.

We are aware of an issue where if you disconnect during the event you will not be able to rejoin. If you experience this, you will be able to participate in the events that follow the one from which you disconnected. For instance, if you were disconnected during the Kessex Hills incursion, you’ll be able to get into the next stage when it takes place in Diessa Plateau.

As we mentioned yesterday, we will be taking care of those of you who did not get your rewards, so look for those in your in-game mail in the coming days.

We encourage all of you who’ve participated in the Mordrem Invasion to please share your constructive thoughts on how we can improve on these types of experiences in the future. Please share your ideas and feedback in this thread.

Thank you.

Can we extend the event from 4 days to maybe one week? Two weeks? Is that possible?

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Posted by: Drazio.4207

Drazio.4207

We have been tracking player response and recognize that this event has not gone as intended. We’re at a point where we can’t change anything more about this event for this weekend without risk to the greater portion of the game. We also are going to postpone our plans to organize an in-game event around the Mordrem Invasion this afternoon. Instead, we’re going to continue to monitor for your feedback and collect information that will help us improve on these types of events going forward.

We are aware of an issue where if you disconnect during the event you will not be able to rejoin. If you experience this, you will be able to participate in the events that follow the one from which you disconnected. For instance, if you were disconnected during the Kessex Hills incursion, you’ll be able to get into the next stage when it takes place in Diessa Plateau.

As we mentioned yesterday, we will be taking care of those of you who did not get your rewards, so look for those in your in-game mail in the coming days.

We encourage all of you who’ve participated in the Mordrem Invasion to please share your constructive thoughts on how we can improve on these types of experiences in the future. Please share your ideas and feedback in this thread.

Thank you.

Can we extend the event from 4 days to maybe one week? Two weeks? Is that possible?

like i have understand it there will nothing more happen with the event.
so the best thing u can do is just ignore the event.

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Posted by: Timelord.8190

Timelord.8190

Just another trashy boring grindy mindless un-rewarding bugged event. I’ll pass.

Far ShiverPeaks (EU)

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Posted by: Setz.9675

Setz.9675

A lot of people already gave a lot of good feedback, however I want to add something.

Using the scarlet invasion as an argument to remove loot from mobs is a faulty argument from the start, stop abusing it. Events that scale when 50+ enter can also NOT spawn champions you know and instead spawn 7 levels higher than players elite mobs… whoohohowoOWOW YOU JUST GOT LIT UP BRAHW!

This event, being the prelude to the HoT expansion should have different waves of mini events. First 10 events that spawn are simple easy peasy events. Next 10 event spawn are more diffulty, add new gameplay that needs to be executed or enemy attacks that need to be avoided. Next 10 events have never seen before enemys, doing lore stuff and say something hypey, prelude for what is to come in HoT, something players can speculate about. For the finishing touch, when the events are done a meta boss spawns but not something like scarlet during her invasion. Something like a mini mordremoth head + half torso + 1 wing coming from the ground. we fight it, need to destroy the roots of evil (heu). Optional*When the boss is defeated he starts laughing manicly and gives his evil speach and thanking players for destroying his counterpart zhaitan which allowed him infinite growth since the aspect of death no longer had a key figure in tyria >and all players move aboard the hype train<

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Posted by: Obs.7829

Obs.7829

I’m just not understanding how we are suppose to get 20+ stacks without tagging and then leaving part way through the encounter and going on to another encounter?

How about giving more stacks for gold, few for silver and one for bronze? would that encourage people to stick around to finish the event and not punish those who do stay to finish? How about a small chest left behind with a few blooms?

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Posted by: Kushi.2164

Kushi.2164

1. I can’t understand how the event gives no Exp, Karma, nor gold… It’s in the beginner zones, you’re trying to get new players to buy HoT, but your rewards don’t do anything to entice them. They can’t buy the skins for 10g, they’re not leveling or gaining anything useful while doing your event.

2. The events are not fun and in fact very anti-community. To get maximum rewards, it encourages players to play as selfishly as possible with tagging and running. You’ve also got the throw the bomb at the vine event where people have to fight over getting the bomb. Would have been much better if you just had an kitten nal of weapons like Jormag.

In fact you could have made the weapons imitate classes + HoT specializations to let people get a taste of the new content.

3. Your rewards are almost mocking players. If you wanted keep the rarity of LS1 goods, you could just do something like ‘you can only purchase 1 out of the 4’. Rather than dangling a bunch of gold sink ‘rewards’ in our faces, only for people to do the math and realize if you want more than 2 items you have to grind 24/7 and can’t sleep for 3 days.

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Posted by: DarkWasp.7291

DarkWasp.7291

Seeing as there is already a lot of feedback on what went wrong, I’d like to highlight a few things that what went right and how it can be improved/incorporated in the future:

1. Personal progress: While I can’t disagree with the suggestions to base the event more on world success and less on personal events tagged, I do feel personal progress is important. Just because a world failed does not mean an individual player could not rise to the challenge.

When personal accomplishment is rewarded, it encourages people to do well. When personal accomplishment is not rewarded, it encourages people to server-hop instead.

FOR THIS EVENT: Capping the max reward at 10 personal events would have been better. To discourage Tag-N-Leave, add extra rewards per 10 mapwide events completed.

2. Bringing back old rewards: Items that we could have missed should always come back. Exclusivity in items is a common argument, but I feel exclusive items should only be rewarded for skill and accomplishment. Not being online at a certain period of time does not constitute a good enough reason to not be able to get an item.

FOR THIS EVENT: The time allotted to attain these items is too short. I hope to see more permanent methods in the future.

3. Utilizing lower level zones for high level purposes: All I can say is that it feels great to have a reason to visit those maps again.

FOR THIS EVENT: It would be nice to see something like mordrem blooms added as a permanent reward to these zones.

4. Thirty minutes on, thirty minutes off: Scarlet’s 45 minute events felt a bit long, but this 30 minute schedule may be just the right spot. Furthermore, not having to wait 2-3 hours between every consecutive attempt is nice for people with real-life schedules.

FOR THIS EVENT: It should have been made clear in the announcement that the invasions weren’t starting at 9:00 but rather 9:30 instead.

^ Uses Guild Wars 2 character screenshots for desktop wallpapers.

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Posted by: Obtena.7952

Obtena.7952

Here is my issue with the event; It’s so short in duration, though drawn out because of the periodic nature of the events, that I don’t feel I would be able to accomplish much with what little time I could dedicate to it. Therefore, why should I bother to participate? You’re game targets casual play? THIS event seems to go out of the way to miss that target.

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Posted by: Malediktus.9250

Malediktus.9250

The rewards are too good if you have do not have any of them, but are bad if you have it all already.

1st person worldwide to reach 35,000 achievement points.

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Posted by: bmxbeat.1487

bmxbeat.1487

I am not sure why anyone would do this. Tag and run events are not good unless you have a high dps fast character. Once the zerg arrives, good luck getting a tag. I am not going to cry about the rewards. Also I am not going to cry about WP costs because it’s not that high and if you join a good guild, they can reduce those costs. I want fun, exciting game play. Rewards are secondary and not the reason I play (albeit a nice incentive).

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Posted by: Lillith.5724

Lillith.5724

I have to agree with most posts here and am actually pretty disappointed in this event. I’m quite surprised at the lack of any rewards for spending 30 minutes in the event, no exp, karma or coin.
It just doesn’t make sense. An event you have to spend gold on for WP and vendor rewards isn’t going to draw new players in.
It almost seems to me this is some sort of beta test to get our reactions for future events when the xpac launches.
I wasn’t going to log in at all yesterday, but was curious. I did one event in Kessex and logged out.

As far as no loot drops from mobs, now really? Whats so wrong with champs dropping a box? So what if it becomes a farming opportunity? It’s only for a few days.
Silverwastes is successful because of this.

Gaile, we appreciate the update today, but I find hard to believe there’s no chance in getting some sort of fix for this. Add some exp and some coin. Give some bloom drops so at least you can get something from the vendor.

As a huge fan of GW1 and the fun events we had over the years, this is completely lackluster and totally surprising from Anet who promised the no grind mentality.

Lillith Flame – Norn Ranger
Guild Leader: Spank Reunited
Yak’s Bend Server

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Posted by: Darkmorphos.1530

Darkmorphos.1530

Here are my thoughts:

The events
Positive I actually think the events are pretty fun, there are special objectives for the three types of events. They are not just waves of enemies we need to kill which is a nice change to some other events.
Negative Sadly these cool mechanics are drowned a bit in the huge zergs of players doing the events. Also there are only three varieties of event, this can become a bit stale. I do understand however this is just intended as a little extra before the launch of HoT.

Motivation
Problem Because the only motivation for these events is the blooms and they are awarded based on the amount of events done people are not motivated to stick around and learn the mechanics. The most rewarding gameplay is to tag two mobs and go to the next event.
Possible solution Give the blooms based on the map wide completion of events. This encourages cooperation, people need to work together to complete the events as quickly as possible. This means they need to pay attention to the mechanics. This also means players will need to spread out to complete all the events, which means less zergs and more fun!

Rewards
Positive I really like the way the bloom-rewards are handled. There are some seriously big and cool rewards to work too, gem store skins, big season 1 rewards, and there is also a lot of choice. I also think it is good we need a lot of blooms to get them, these are big rewards, it shouldn’t be easy to get them! (It needs to be very, (very!) hard to get all of them.)
Negative I however don’t think this should be the only reward, give some loot, perhaps like the Silverwastes do (just don’t overdo it like the Silverwastes). Also give these rewards on a map wide basis to encourage cooperation. Lastly I don’t really understand why we shouldn’t be getting experience for these events? Especially since these are low level zones meaning there are lots of players trying to level…
Summing up By combining these rewards people will always feel rewarded because they are getting loot and they will also slowly be able to work towards bigger rewards with the Blooms.

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Posted by: Skolops.2604

Skolops.2604

There are a lot of posts here going into many of the specifics of the event, and these contain some valuable points which ought certainly be applied for future events. However, the biggest problem with this event is actual much, much simpler:

It’s got FAR too large a time investment for FAR too little reward.

Different players will like different kinds of events, different formats, mechanics, etc. Some like zergy events, others like more mechanics oriented events, etc. etc. etc. Some like events based heavily on rewards, while others even like events where the rewards are less important or even an afterthought.

However, nobody is going to like an event that takes a full half hour of time and produces so little. Even people who don’t mind rewards being an afterthought aren’t going to like that much time commitment for an afterthought. Events that take a great deal of time are okay, but you need to come away feeling like the time was well spent.

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Posted by: Ponomas.9647

Ponomas.9647

I think the biggest problem is that the amount of days the event is available is not long enough to build up enough blooms to get much of anything. How it stands now, I can make the Brisban Wilds event before work giving me the 20 bonus blooms and i can only seem to get enough events to get 10 bonus. After work, I can only get the Brisban Wilds event before bed. Since I already completed it before work, I no longer get the bonus. That gives me 10 more blooms. So for the day, I can only earn a maximum of 40 blooms.

I normally have weekends off, but of course this weekend I have to work. It is really disappointing that at most I could probably only get about 160 blooms over the four days. It is so disappointing that I do not even see a point in doing the events. It really just comes down to wasting my time that I could be using to do other things in the game.

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Posted by: Brown Fang Thump.9482

Brown Fang Thump.9482

Without knowing ArenaNet’s full intentions with this content it is hard to fully evaluate the event’s success. Still, it is easy to see that many players are unhappy.

As I have stated in another thread about this event, I can not, as a guild leader, recommend this event to my guild members as a fun or rewarding addition to the game. The fact that the reward system is a mess is beside the point really, mainly because there are much greater design issues that need to be addressed. Most of my guild members enjoy player versus environment content; yet, they draw their enjoyment chiefly from the sense of accomplishment completing PvE can provide that is absent from the Modrem event experience.

To improve this type of content I would suggest:

1. Adopt and adapt the Silverwastes reward structure that combines looting with HUD reward chests. Evolving the system to evaluate player involvement based on kills, events participated in and time spent per event as percentiles of a developer defined quota for completion would be a boon for individuals and groups alike. The quota could be adjusted at will without effecting content to better serve player population and activity.

2. Require a “shell success” rate for each time period during which you want the event to be played in while keeping play periods down to 5-15 minutes per period. The 15 minute play period works well in WvW and PvP: follow those examples that players enjoy without major complaints. An example of a shell success rate here would be: over the 3 maps involved in this event 80% of all events must be completed for copper reward, 88% for silver, 93% for gold. This shell rule would apply separately from the individual map reward requirements, as an aggregate. It should be calculated for players based on the actual play they have invested, rather than requiring persistent grinding. Thus, a player should be able to do map 1 today, map 3 tomorrow and map 2 later to reap the reward for completing a single circuit of maps 1, 2 and 3. This would allow guild leaders and parties to repeat specific maps together without fear of losing rewards mid-stream.

3. Individual map rewards should be based on map-wide successful completion of events. These events should also sprawl a bit (spread their areas over time) in order to engage more players if the events go unchallenged. For this to work well, all events on the map need to be aware of each other and their states of success or failure. Enabling events to react to each other, even when they are distant from each other, creates dynamic strategic play opportunities for coordinated player groups to overcome [though this may require a separate AI/artificial life server to be optimized fully if procedural AI is not built into NPCs and events.] At the least, this will give players an excuse to stick together and complete events within the map, rather than tag and run. Map success rewards must take into account individual player time invested as it relates to each player’s effort expended. Naturally, event NPCs need to scale properly and quickly according to local numbers and potential player force. To make this work, events must be take off timers completely and based solely on procedural contingencies.

4. To keep new players and casual roamers engaged, all assets involved must offer a nominal reward for participation: loot drops for kills, guild influence for event participation, experience/karma rewards for kills. These breadcrumbs need to be dropped to keep folks interested. Equally, events must be designed to adapt quickly to fluctuating player involvement while retaining a real and present threat of failure. Enabling event sprawl mentioned earlier would assure that “failed” events (those that result in NPCs successfully capturing territory from players) give opposition momentum that players would need to counter to regain competitive advantage.

5. For this event, I would give the Mordrem Spawners a 30 second “fog of war” similar to that of gates in WvW. This would give them a delay before appearing on the compass or overhead map. During this fog period, the spawner spawner would field a number and scale of NPCs calculated to be challenging for the actual number of players active on the map at the time. These initial forces would grow and sprawl outward unless defeated. The effect would be less “shooter zombie/horde mode” and more “RTS turtling attack with donut strategies for flavor”.

6. Base individual rewards during map periods on individual effort expended, relative to potential effort expended. This would mean that a level 18 toon capable of doing X damage to Y foes over Z period would get full rewards only for actually meeting 80% or more of that potential, assessed on a per kill/event basis. A good implementation of this system would mean that level 18 participation would be equally valid and rewarding as level 80 participation.

7. Stop releasing technology demonstrations as if they were content. If you want to test a specific game mechanic for addition to the game, don’t make a big deal out of it: simply add it in a small, unassuming location where it can be tracked over time. If it’s fun, players will find it, talk about it, and point each other toward it while you collect the data you need to justify possibly scaling it up to a larger implementation. Also, focus more on making fun content with the tools and assets currently in the game than recreating the wheel with new game mechanics that aren’t fully tested before release. There are a lot of examples of successful games that repurpose assets to give players fun new play experiences while extending the life of the game as a whole. There are not a lot of examples of successful games that repeatedly create new content that is less fun than the original content.

Edit: Using a six letter a-word for evaluation resulted in being censored with “kitten”; so, I had to go back and change that word. Silly.

(edited by Brown Fang Thump.9482)

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Posted by: Rococo.8347

Rococo.8347

Im just sticking to tagging 10 events and finishing most if not all of them

- I will get 10 rather than 15 blossoms but anyone doing the maths knows getting more than 1 big ticket item isn’t possible anyway so im saving myself a hernia and being more community minded – I have seen events fail after 30 mins because everyone legged it.

My Necro is so kittened she isn’t getting the toxic gloves aswell as the toxic shoulders.

Now if you ran this even for several more weekends tweaked for extra blossoms and XP people might have a fighting chance… I accepted the exceptional grind for all 3 SW armour sets ( I didn’t bother with the luminescent) because at least I was getting boxes after each mini event and it was a new area…

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Posted by: Retsuko.2035

Retsuko.2035

While playing in this event the first thing I thought was how dumbminded it really is, and how bad it is designed since it motivates players to just hit and run without seeing anything through in order to get the maximum reward. It came to me rather quickly what the best “tactic” was to even have a chance to reach 20+ stack buff before the timer was up.

So I decided to mostly make a minimum required amount of input in each event before heading out for the next. Sometimes when I saw it went quickly enough I would stick around until it was done. I was solo’ing without party though but I managed to get rewarded for pretty much each event. The 3rd map I did I managed to do it fast and got to 21 stack just in time so it really motivates players to use this tactic to get the maximum out of the event.

Other downsides which make this event badly designed is how you’re pressured into making it to events on time, and pressured to deal enough damage to even get rewarded for it.

I noticed that a lot of people are somehow pulled together in one big zerg and especially without a party (or even with party it’s difficult enough) there is big chance you won’t even get a hit of or deal enough damage to a single mob to be rewarded for the events it runs through. Personally I just went my own way and usually got there before the big masses did.

It’s absolutely not new player friendly, like someone else already has explained, the rewarding system is not useful for them at all, nor is it an event from which I think ANET can really impress the newer players. It’s more anti advertisement if you’d ask me.

For veterans the challenge is not there, and for most it’s simply a dumbminding grind.

Everyone who participates in this event from beginning to end should be rewarded equally, and should not be based on how much you were able to leech from events.

To make the rewarding more fair, the only thing I can think of right now is to make a public map event split into phases in which each player gets rewarded for each phase they contribute in. And have the contribution total of all players together per map overflow decide how much the reward is going to be which should always be based on the amount of players on a map as well. A map with 100 players getting 100% more contribution compared to a group of 50 players bringing the same individual effort would be unfair as well.

Retsu ~ Inner Monkey [IM] ~ Piken Square

(edited by Retsuko.2035)

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Posted by: Lemondish.3268

Lemondish.3268

My feedback will be quick:

- Personal stacks that determine quality of rewards encourages selfish behaviour. I’ve seen folks running around to tag as many events as possible without sticking around to complete one. I’ve also seen players ignore fallen comrades to ensure they get credit for a completed event.
- The enemies are not very numerous. They also die very quickly. It does not feel like I’m battling back a Mordrem invasion. It feels more like I’m pulling weeds out in the garden.
- I like that this is happening in the lower level zones. It gets some of the new free players a taste of these big events.
- The initial post that encouraged guild action for this got me to find and join a great guild. It’s been a blast playing this with them. It would be great if that came with a guild related achievement.
- I like pie

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Posted by: That Guy.5704

That Guy.5704

here is a description along the lines of what I expected to see as an example

Around each map there are 5 spots chosen that are traditionally friendly areas of some kind or may not be, but the groups that are normally hostile ally themselves temporarily to fight off mordremoth. 3 of the ones in Diessa might be Village of Butcher’s block, Redreave Mill and Town of Nageling as an example. Bulliyak kitten nal might be an example of a normally hostile area but the flame legion ally themselves for the event. Their respective waypoints would be contested thoughout the event unless ALL mordrem in the area of that event are dead (this would happen if you were able to defeat every mordrem before the next wave spawns.

At each point there is a large capture ring around it like any of the many defend/capture events around the world. At the start of the event, the players own the area. Every 2 minutes or so, a wave of mordrem attack. 1 wave consists of 6 groups coming from 1 of 2 sides. each group consists of 1 “planter” (get to that in a second) 1 champion, 2 elites, 3 vets and 3 vet menders. All of these should have hit points well above what the ones in the current event do. All of these have a chance to drop a blossom (25% chance?). These spawns will be happening at the edge of the capture ring.

These groups are escorting the planters into the center of the capture area and the planters have extra high hitpoints, have defiance, but dont attack. each wave has 2 types of planters chosen between troll, thrasher, terragriff and husk. 3 of the groups are escorting one type while 3 are another. consecutive waves will not have the same type.
During these spawns, the same vines from this event with the same mechanics (though with mechanics scaled down a little) can appear on the edge of the capture area and toss some extra mordrem into the center of the area. These extra mordrem should be considered a part of the vine and have no drops themselves, but the vine can allow blossom drops. In these groups hitpoints scale, numbers do not.

If 2 of the same type make it to the center of the control point, damage against them is heavily reduced and they begin a 10 second channeling process together, but gain a break bar. if the channel is broken, they will become vulnerable for some time (15 seconds?) and try again unless 1 is killed. If the channel is not broken, it will summon a legendary version of the type doing the summoning. Basically it drops in the legendary from silverwastes.

Once the legendary spawns, new incoming waves stop until the legendary is killed. The legendary doesnt drop anything. Once the legendary is within the area, it is considered to be occupied by mordremoth.

this event has map rewards based on the number of map wide waves completed (remember waves stop when a legend spawns) and a multiplier (10% bonus?) per control point that is occupied by players rather than mordremoth ie, no legendary.
If, at the end of the 30 minute event, all 5 points on the map are controlled by players, a bonus 5 minute event begins where breachers (the big worm guys from verdant brink) come out of the ground at each control point. A bonus map wide reward is given based on the number of breachers killed.

Differences (hopefully what this design would encourage/provides) individual rewards encourage participation, map rewards encourage splitting and cooperation. fewer locations with contested waypoints encourages staying in one place but split and provides a bigger sense of urgency if you cant just port to the same spot. The legendary without a reward and the breacher encourages successful completion (over failing for a better reward) of the whole map meta event rather than zerging at one place for individual rewards.

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Posted by: Gaile Gray

Previous

Gaile Gray

ArenaNet Communications Manager

Next

I rarely come here to post or reply but I just want the devs to know how important it is for us players to not be punished in any way by having a disconnect in the middle of a play session, more importantly if we are going to lose any progress we have made in a said event. If there was a way to “save” that progress for a few minutes so we have the time to log back in, it would be great, and yes I know we can do the next event in 30 minutes but for some 30 min are alot and dont have time for more.

We completely agree with you. The team will be working on a way to address this. I don’t know if progress would be saved, that’s a question for a designer or programmer. However, at the least, we don’t want someone to lose their rewards!

Gaile Gray
Communications Manager
Guild & Fansite Relations; In-Game Events
ArenaNet

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Posted by: Rococo.8347

Rococo.8347

I rarely come here to post or reply but I just want the devs to know how important it is for us players to not be punished in any way by having a disconnect in the middle of a play session, more importantly if we are going to lose any progress we have made in a said event. If there was a way to “save” that progress for a few minutes so we have the time to log back in, it would be great, and yes I know we can do the next event in 30 minutes but for some 30 min are alot and dont have time for more.

We completely agree with you. The team will be working on a way to address this. I don’t know if progress would be saved, that’s a question for a designer or programmer. However, at the least, we don’t want someone to lose their rewards!

Could you clarify as im now confused – you said previously that nothing could now ben done to improve the event – but you say Dev’s are working on improvements? does this mean the event will come back soon?

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Posted by: Agrotera.1254

Agrotera.1254

I did the event in Brisban Wildlands twice today. Both times the only reward that I got was 5 blooms, the “bonus” chest. I didn’t get anything for all of the events that I did. To say that I am seriously not happy would be an understatement.

you can’t fix stupid

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Posted by: Neox.3497

Neox.3497

I don’t understand why you didn’t took the total completed events of the maps into account for the rewards.

Why not something like this?:

(Your stacks) * (Events completed on the whole map) * ~0.1 = (Numbers of Mordrem Blooms you get)

And your own stacks should have some maximum that you can get without TAGGING events but by simply completing them, maybe 10.

Also add normal random loot from mobs like almost any mob does.

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Posted by: Orpheal.8263

Orpheal.8263

My List of what is all wrong with this kind of Event Design

1) Too short. – Too short Events create PRESSURE, make Events GRINDY.
Would it have been too much, if the Modrem Invasions would last same as long, as liek the Scarlet invasions of the Past? NO
Would it make the Event less grindy? HELL YES, because so more time people have, so lesser they have to do on 1 day to achieve their goals, lesser pressure, lesser feeling of grind, lesser *peep*storms of angry players! Easy logic!

2) Way too long Waiting Times!! – Seriously, who at Anet found it ok, that Waiting Times of 1,5 Hours is good???
People are already seriously annyed to hell, if we have to wait like 45 Minutes, and you just doubked the Wating Time! Seriously!!!
If this kind of Anet typical Gold Sink Event should be anyhow effective, then you want to have as less Waiting Time as possible, so that Peopel can get quicker their Blloms they want to spent money on al those several Gold costing Minis and Skins and you want the Events to rotate much faster and keep on running, so that constantly alot more people use the waypoints.
You dont want to have hundreds of peopel standing afk around in a map doing nothign and dieing out of boredom for 90 Minutes!! Its COUNTERPRODUCTIVE!!
Remove the Waiting Times, or significantkly reduce them now, thats the least you can do to make the Event for now better for everyone. Maximum 15 Mins Waiting Time, if there desperately needs to be one, for whatever reason!!
Increase the Duration of the Event instead to 45 Mins, to give people more tiem to get enough Stacks, so that also lesser populated Servvers actully have chances to get into the higher Stack Heights for more Blossoms.
This way we have more Action and lesser waiting within 1 Hour Rotations.

3) Very unattractive Rewards – For Newbies, most of the stuff is way too expensive to be anyhow appealing as rewards, for veterans most of the stuff is absolutely uninteresting, because active playersw most likely will have already everything of the item,s except for some Gemstore Skins maybe or Minis.
Everyone who was very active already at the Scarlet Invasions will most likely (like me) have already both Potions
You know, what good general Rewards would have been here?
Enabling us to get various Lodestones for example, that would be valuable rewards for new as like Veteran Players
T6 Materials would be good Rewards, same again ,good for new as like Veteran Players
The chance to earn some Black Lion Chest Keys or Black Lion Ticket Scraps, that would be good rewards for that its worth it to grind for every now and then when you might bring a special Event like this once in a while.

4) The whole Event is nothing but simpley Rushing around and Tagging as much as you can, instead of rewarding players fortheir Efforts in a way, that leeds not to people AFK/Leeching and Tagging.
Rewards should have more factors that should be used to scale more accordingly the rewards for a player.
If a player just runs around and tags as many enemies in events, without actually killing something and just waitign for it, that others do the job for you, such a person should receive no rewards at all. Because such anti sociopaths are no help for anyone.
People should get rewarded onl,y when they participate in an Event long enough, and stay for the duration of the event in the event zone, that is invisible for players and just stand in that zone not afk around, but actualyl kill also enmies within that event time in the event zone and in regard of how many kills you make, this actually decisdes then your participation level, if either Bronze, Silver or Gold Participation
if Events would acrtually consider multiple factors into the calculation of how much a person gets rewarded, that would actually prevent people from afking and tagging around only and receiving for this antisocial behavior even better rewards, than someone, who plays the event as like intended!! This can’t be serious and must get fixed finally!

5) Enemies are way too weak and boring. Mostly everythign doesn’t scale up goo enough, everythign dies too fast under a Zerg in the map, because people play it naturally all with their maxed out 80s and not with Lvl 20 Beginner charas in blue/green equipment to have a chance to deal enough damage at enemies to get actually Event Participation and even then mostly alot of enemies around you die, before you could deal enough damage to get just maybe bronze participation. Sometimes even no participation at all >.>

Personally I like the idea behind sub classes ~ quoted from Chris Whiteside

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Posted by: Rauderi.8706

Rauderi.8706

If the event could last more time… but I appreciate all the honesty.

I’d be fine with this going several more days. Maybe, say.. two weeks?

Many alts; handle it!
“I’m finding companies should sell access to forums,
it seems many like them better than the games they comment on.” -Horrorscope.7632

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Posted by: Daroon.1736

Daroon.1736

Firstly can I re-iterate what several others have said – The honesty in admitting that the event has not gone as intended is a breath of fresh air.

On the event itself, many in this thread have eloquently described individual points that would help improve event design in the future, but what I would like the team to reflect on is why these issues (all of which have been discussed many time in the past) were allowed to be included in the initial design for this event and why nobody was able to anticipate that the event as it was rolled out, would be so unpopular.

DISCONNECTS

Hundreds of threads have been posted about how this issue affects players since launch, GW1 had similar issues and the team eventually implemented a system that fixed the problems. Given that you had those experiences to build on, why is content being increasingly designed that is reliant on staying connected to the game for fixed periods in order to receive rewards or participate in end boss battles.

You (really should) already know that any content where a DC causes progression to be lost is going to be unpopular, so why continue to implement designs that highlight this issue without fixing the source problem?

BALANCED REWARDS

Given the issues above, A simple tiered achievement (similar to the activity ones) that awarded a bloom chests every 10 events completed would have been a much simpler solution. DC’s would not have been an issue and if the achievement tracking was designed to only register if players were within ‘range’ when the event completed (you clearly are able to do this as the last beta zones showed) – players would not be able to ‘play’ the system by tagging and moving on.

Again you must know that mobs not dropping loot is deeply unpopular, so why are events designed this way? Are the issues caused by having more gold seemingly more important than having players participate and enjoy the experience?

TESTING

Probably the thing the irks most players. Bugs, personally I can deal with, even if they appear to us players to be glaringly obvious (no rewards – progress blocked etc) but given just the few examples I have given here, why does it appear that the team in general is so poor at anticipating problems that are likely to occur, when all of the issues that are likely to cause those problems are already (or should be) well known?

Going forward I believe that this is the internal conversation that needs to take place.

(edited by Daroon.1736)

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Posted by: insanemaniac.2456

insanemaniac.2456

try to incentivize seeing a single event through to its completion over tagging 5 events in the same amount of time.

the amount of blooms given is far too low for the amount of time one needs to spend in order to buy a whole bunch of the shop items. i, for one, missed out on the battle for lions arch so i have basically none of the exclusive-ish items that are available, which means i would prolly need 2-2.5k blooms to get it all… but i can “easily” get only 75-90 per day for 3 hours of play time, or i can grind out maybe 200-300 per day by dedicating every waking second… which means it will take me 10-30 days to satisfy my perceived needs from a 4 day event.

JQ: Rikkity
head here to discuss wvw without fear of infractions

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Posted by: Tasao.4623

Tasao.4623

If I could see the event improved in any way, this is what’d I’d wish for:

I’d like it if there were some minor rewards for doing the individual events. Blooms or scarlet boxes/dust cases or other things from event enemies or from reward chests resulting from the actual events. Even just some silver would be nice. The dream would be blooms + silver per event with a chance at getting a bonus box based on your participations. So gold is a decent chance at a scarlet or dust box. Bronze is a not so good chance. So you can balance between tagging a lot of events or really working hard at fewer events, but getting gold on those.

I’d like it if the events scaled in enemy number rather than upscaling some enemies so hard they become super tanky while the normal enemies die before you can even tag them.

I’d like if there were a flow to events, so rather than race all over the map and often show up too late to participate, you could comfortably stop and fight and do event mechanics without feeling like you need to hurry up so you can go tag another event.

Which leads directly to my biggest wish: That the rewards were more reliable, perhaps based on overall map completion rather than individual stacks. It’s so hard to hit 20/21 stacks for the 5 extra blooms that it’s often best to just get 10 or 11 stacks then idle for 40 minutes until the next zone is about to start up, then do 10 or 11 more stacks there.

What if rewards scaled by overall zone completion, and your stacks gave you a stacking defensive bonus against the mordrem or/and a stacking rewards bonus? +10% chance at rare rewards per stack? Or +1 bloom per stack and your main bloom reward came from total zone completed? So 40 events completed in the zone = 40 blooms total?
So you can play casually and not race and get 8 stacks and a 40-zone total would mean you get 48 blooms plus maybe the daily blooms.

Then it takes you like 10 maps to unlock the 450 bloom rewards. Sounds fair to me.

Likewise, if you rush and get 20 stacks in that same zone that did 40 total events, you get 60 base blooms. 1 per stack and 1 per zone-wide event counter incrementation. Encourages people not to rush or zerg, but to spread out and cover as many areas as possible to quickly knock the events out.

Another area of my feedback would be the timing and pacing itself. The 30 minute races with 30 minutes of downtime are pretty unfun to me. I’d rather there be like hour-long periods with rolling events across a zone, and when that ends it jumps to another zone and starts rolling. Maybe include a pause between the final zone and the cycle restarting. This would probably not be compatible with my previous feedback on bloom rewards but either change would be nice.

And finally, the actual cost of the rewards is disappointing. If someone goes all-out on all 4 days of the event I feel like they should be able to obtain most of what they want. As it stands, that’s impossible. And on top of the high relative bloom cost, the gold cost tacked on feels really insulting. I know a new player that was excited to learn the selfless potion could give her a halo, until she went to the vendor and saw it also cost 10g on top of hundreds of blooms. She doesn’t have the time to sink into the game to make it to enough events to gather that many blooms, and as a new player she doesn’t have 10g to spend on a vanity potion either.

It seems like the limiting steps built into this event punish new and casual and poor players very heavily, while the rewards for the hardcore are mediocre.

So my (attempt at) constructive advice would be to simply cut the gold cost heavily or completely and either scale down the bloom cost or scale up bloom income.

The expense of the rewards is really the tipping point on this event. If you could reliably grind out blooms for the items you wanted most people wouldn’t even care how broken or unfun the event was. But because the event itself isn’t good, for reasons listed all over the place, and because the rewards are hard or sometimes impossible to get, players feel slighted. They were promised a fun event. Shiny skins and potions and minis and other goodies were put on display in front of them. And then the method of acquisition turned out to be hideous. So it feels like betrayal. Like a bait and switch.

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Posted by: That Guy.5704

That Guy.5704

In addition to my post, I want to mention that I am worried about this event for new players, especially the free players as this is their first big event and are interacting with the community in a very different way. Something along the lines of my post which essentially is just a spin on silverwastes anyway, might have resulted in commanders at each one, large numebrs of players organizing and cooperating more or less spontaneously across a map wide meta event all for a common goal. Something like that would have been amazing to see for a brand new player and would have been a great place for guilds to get together and maybe run a control point as a guild. As it is, its a zergfest where even taking the time to communicate your next waypoint could means that you dont get your tag on an event in. it is really unfortunate as I really thought this would be a great place to show new and free placers just what the devs are capable of and just what kind of large scale organization is possible in this kind of game. unfortunately, the implementation has brought out the most selfish play styles.

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Posted by: Kebra Nagast.4189

Kebra Nagast.4189

I usually enjoy the events and the new contents but this time I shall admit that the event has some fatal flaws that make it not really enjoyable.

  1. Map wide effort: this is the most important point in this event. The rewards are character based and not map based. This means that the more events a player can tag (not actually doing them!), the better is the reward he get. As you can easily see this is simply wrong. In my opinion this event should be about people organizing in small groups to kill the greater number of invasions spawns as possible, rather than zerging out the whole map. Also, people getting DC lose their progress which is not fair. What to do?
    Mechanic 1: to avoid leeching you should give the reward for the events ONLY if the player was playing the invasion spawn event (hit count) for at least 30 seconds and is within the area of the event when it ends. When I talk about the “area of the event” I mean about 1500 range outside the “event circle” on the map. You can even mark the event area on the ground with a thin light circle so that players will know if they are leaving the area.
    Mechanic 2: the event reward should not be a buff counter lost upon DC, but it should be a stackable item that expires after 20 minutes from the end of the invasion event. This items are rewarded according to the previous condition and can be exchanged with the “event currency” (blooms in this case) after the invasion event is finished.
    Mechanic 3: if the map scores a high number of invasion spawns defeated, everyone in the map get additional reward (the stackable item).
  2. Rewards: it is clear that the event has not been designed to be able to earn all the rewards offered by the special vendor. Nevertheless the ratio time spent/reward is not good here. I’m personally after the toxic skins (450 blooms) and I see many players that want the halo or the horns (again, 450 blooms). In any case you are actually offering something for a price of 450 blooms. Even without doing the exact math, it is clear that to be able to get this item, one cannot miss a single day of the event, and this badly accepted by the community. In the future if you want to limit the rewards to 1 or 2 items at most you can simply give 1 reward per account for completing the event 1 time. For example in this event you could have distributed one “ticket” for completing a full set of event (Brisban, Kessex and Diessa), just once. How to keep a player playing the event once he got his ticket? Read below…
  3. Experience point, karma, loot: it is extremely frustrating to do events and not getting even a single XP! Events are events and they should reward karma, coins and experience as everywhere else in the game. This is even more relevant considering that the event is meant to attract new players.

I’m no programmer (at least, video game programmer) so I don’t know if my suggestion are feasible or not, but I have appreciated your effort to listen to the players. Keep up this good attitude, I trust you’ll give great content in the future.

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Posted by: Silmar Alech.4305

Silmar Alech.4305

About loot:

In the previous years, players got more and more loot from enemies. In general, the players were educated that filling the inventory is the way they are rewarded in this game. We clicked all containers open, recycled stuff, sold stuff, stored stuff, and after that, our account store contained a few more materials and we had a few parts in the trading post for sale. Currently, we are expecting that things are working that way, because we were conditioned this way by the game.

Now, in this event, suddenly there is nothing of this kind. Absolutely nothing. Only after half an hour, if you didn’t have a disconnect, some mordrem blooms. A few tokens. Too few tokens. To get real stuff out of it, we actually have to pay gold to get it from a vendor. So even the tokens are no reward, they are only unlocking some item for sale at a vendor.

So, the whole event is about unlocking items at a certain vendor, so you can buy them with your gold you earned previously somewhere else.

But while you are occupied with unlocking the vendor items, you don’t get any character progression or earn the fruits of previous character progression. No XP. You cannot level new characters. The precious Magic Find is useless. No Karma. MF or Karma Boosters aren’t working – all the banners. You are also paying for the waypoints to get more events to get more tokens.

In the end, you first pay gold for the tokens, then pay again for the vendor items. If you don’t get enough tokens at the end of the 4-day event for your desired items due to the very short time frame, your whole time and gold investment was in vain. It’s like a disconnect in the middle of the action.

After I found that out, I chose to not visit any of the invasions again. I enjoyed the gameplay of one invasion. I fought the Mordrem, destroyed the targets, and the Mordrem force retreated in the end. Nice fun event for one time. But not for repeating it over and over again and not be sure if I can get enough tokens to buy that certain reward at the vendor that I’d like to have.

(edited by Silmar Alech.4305)

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Posted by: Silverhajen.4587

Silverhajen.4587

I think 30 mins are to short a time, i mean – im having problems when i try to “hop” between the events. And rewards should be a bit easier to get. I very rarely get to more than 11 stacks even if i try to “hop”. Cant WP while in combat so have to kill things (wich doesnt help most of the time) or run far away.
And most of us have a life, cant play 24 hour/day. So 3-4 days for this kind of event is far to short. Should be at least a week or maybe 2 weeks.

“sometimes you have to PUNCH your way through”

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Posted by: Iason Evan.3806

Iason Evan.3806

As a suggestion for rewards I’d like to look at well-loved rewards in events as compared with this event.

1.) 1st Halloween Event. Rewards included gem shop items and exclusive skins as drops. No gold sink involved.

2.) First Pavilion Event. Offered difficult solo content and big group content with tons of rewards in the form of crafting materials and copious amounts of gold. Achievements were available as well as a mini pet and title.

This event: Gold sink. The skins were a nice inclusion but at cost to the player making them NOT rewards. It’s a vendor that you are allowed to purchase stuff from after you have jumped through a series of hoops. No AP, no karma, no loot, no XP. No guild recruiting support to speak of from arenanet as was previously announced.

We have gone from the first event in game in GW2 being the Halloween event offering gem shop items as drops to this. I hope the disparity in terms of quality is painfully obvious.

Leader of The Guernsey Milking Coalition [MiLk] Sanctum of Rall

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Posted by: runeblade.7514

runeblade.7514

What I liked:

  • Mobs not dropping loot. I felt freed when I didn’t bring my Guardian loot stick. Instead, I brought a class that I enjoyed playing.
  • I like the rate of blooms right now. Compared to 5 blooms per half an hour.
  • Rewards are actually interesting to grind for.

What I hate:

  • No rewards for doing an event. If I dc, I will lose all my claims to reward.
  • I absolutely hate how the tagging works. I want to help, not tag. But I get rewarded less for helping than tagging.
  • Not enough high health mobs. I couldn’t get a single hit on my warrior. I had to change into ranger so I can hit something.
  • Invasions are immersion breaking. The other npc stand around like nothing happened. I want to see them all hide and talk about the invasion.

Improving Invasions

  • Remove waypoint cost.
  • Let all wp be unlocked temporary.
  • Put a challenging boss at the end. It doesn’t need to be at Brisban and Kessex. But, at least one boss at Dissea where the finale ends until the next rotation to break the monotony.
5x Warrior, 5x Ranger, 4x Elementalist, 4x Engineer,
4x Necromancer, 3x Mesmer, 4x Guardian, 4x Thief, 4 Revenant

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Posted by: Laniya.9520

Laniya.9520

The actual purchasable rewards are good.
The entire problem with this event is the ludicrous amount of time that is expected to be put in to get anything from this event due to the laughably low amount of currency we get for doing these events over this infuriatingly short amount of time.
A problem compounded by the fact every subevent in this is boring.

The purchasable rewards are ok for level 80 players…but 10 Gold? for new players ? How are they going to get 10 gold at level 12-15? Most of the time they can’t even get a hit in before others kill everything. So not many blooms for them either.
Thank you for your comments Gaile….good to know you can’t change any more of it right now. Then a lot of us just won’t waste time. And yes, its very boring over and over again. I can’t justify the grind.

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Posted by: Gaile Gray

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Gaile Gray

ArenaNet Communications Manager

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I rarely come here to post or reply but I just want the devs to know how important it is for us players to not be punished in any way by having a disconnect in the middle of a play session, more importantly if we are going to lose any progress we have made in a said event. If there was a way to “save” that progress for a few minutes so we have the time to log back in, it would be great, and yes I know we can do the next event in 30 minutes but for some 30 min are alot and dont have time for more.

We completely agree with you. The team will be working on a way to address this. I don’t know if progress would be saved, that’s a question for a designer or programmer. However, at the least, we don’t want someone to lose their rewards!

Could you clarify as im now confused – you said previously that nothing could now ben done to improve the event – but you say Dev’s are working on improvements? does this mean the event will come back soon?

I’m sorry if my answer wasn’t clear. The devs are looking into a way to prevent people from losing rewards when they disconnect in the middle of an event. It is not possible to make changes to this event, but the information gained through player reports will help us address problems in the game and prevent them in the future.

Gaile Gray
Communications Manager
Guild & Fansite Relations; In-Game Events
ArenaNet

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Posted by: Stardust.7892

Stardust.7892

Main issues my guild discussed:

  • The event is not enticing at all to new players – to whom this event was supposedly aimed at. No exp earned for kills/events, no money earned…. in fact, you LOSE money WPing around the map, and the rewards you can get with the blooms cost even MORE money – more money than and new player can scrounge up. It’s sad that basic dynamic map events are more rewarding than this event for new players.
  • Rewarding selfishness – along with new players, this event was advertised for guilds to recruit and team build. However, the only way to get the best rewards is to run around being unhelpful, tagging things and leaving. This made it impossible for my guild to play together and have fun, let alone think about recruiting during this madness.
  • Unfun grind. I am no stranger to grinding – I actually love events like Silverwastes and the Queen’s Gauntlet. THOSE events, however, give lots of different incentives to participate. Exp, gold, drops, etc. This event lacks everything that could make grinding worth it.

Basically, this event rubbed everyone in my guild the wrong way, and has caused a lot of salty talk in gchat.

EDIT: Also the lack of achievements made most of my guild not want to return after one try of it, because they already had the skins they wanted from the vendors from when they were available previously. So veterans are bored too.

(edited by Stardust.7892)

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Posted by: Serophous.9085

Serophous.9085

I rarely come here to post or reply but I just want the devs to know how important it is for us players to not be punished in any way by having a disconnect in the middle of a play session, more importantly if we are going to lose any progress we have made in a said event. If there was a way to “save” that progress for a few minutes so we have the time to log back in, it would be great, and yes I know we can do the next event in 30 minutes but for some 30 min are alot and dont have time for more.

We completely agree with you. The team will be working on a way to address this. I don’t know if progress would be saved, that’s a question for a designer or programmer. However, at the least, we don’t want someone to lose their rewards!

Could you clarify as im now confused – you said previously that nothing could now ben done to improve the event – but you say Dev’s are working on improvements? does this mean the event will come back soon?

I’m sorry if my answer wasn’t clear. The devs are looking into a way to prevent people from losing rewards when they disconnect in the middle of an event. It is not possible to make changes to this event, but the information gained through player reports will help us address problems in the game and prevent them in the future.

So even extending it isn’t possible then…sad

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Posted by: Becka Williams.4978

Becka Williams.4978

I just fixed tagging and running: Rewards are given per event, but in a chest that spawns. If you don’t loot the chest, you don’t get the rewards. There, fixed.

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Posted by: Ghedoriah.4290

Ghedoriah.4290

I think the key thing I’d say about this is that, okay, this event has not really worked out and the rewards are a bit of a mess. It would however be really good if we could get some kind of confirmation as to whether or not the Mordrem Blooms are just for this event or if we’ll see them come back around again in a future event. That would make a huge difference between being able to casually enjoy some of the events over the course of the weekend or potentially just ignoring it because the grind to get some of the rewards is excessive.

Sea of Sorrows

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Posted by: Kodiak.3281

Kodiak.3281

Making the top end reward (20+ contribution stacks) only really possible by being anti-social and quick tagging events (IE: kill 1-5 creatures, then running to next event leaving others to finish) is poor design. It encourages us to play a certain way to get maximum rewards.

If you want to encourage people to behave in a more social nature and work together the rewards should be tied to how many events are completed in the zone instead and given to everyone who participates in a minimum of those events.

Designing systems in fear of people exploiting them for rewards is silly when most of the good rewards are account based. The zero rewards (xp, loot, karma) is ridiculous waste of time. Oh no we might get champ bags? Because we can’t get that infinitely with Chest Trains in Silverwastes? Seems a little silly.

Kodiak X – Blackgate