Guild Wars 2

I am not a new player, however after playing yesterday I felt that this would be an excellent way to level up some of my lower level characters. Little did I know that all experience had been stripped from the event.

I don’t know what people were thinking when they advertised this to new players and then removed all possible means of reward/progress from new players.

No exp for kills, no loot from kills, no exp/karma/gold reward from event completion. Why would I bother as a new or old player bother to spend my time participating in this event. For the mediocre rewards from the merchant, most of which are pulled from past events that many people probably already have? No thanks.

This is the biggest fail I have ever seen by Arena Net since the launch of the original Guild Wars.

When I waited for the event to be released I was so excited. I thought this was going to be an epic adventure, and that I could finally get the Selfless potion I have wanted ever since I realized that I didn’t get it during the last event. The more I participated in the first event, the angrier I got. It was nothing like what you guys are known for. As many have pointed out already the lack of xp, karma, drops, anything really, made the event an underwhelming grind with the “first myself and then myself” mentality that other games struggle with. GW2 wasn’t that game before this event.

I stopped doing the events until the all clear was given about the bug. I got back into it today and I was just angry the whole time I participated. The reward prices are too high and the blossom rewards are too low. On top of that you gave us 4 days to do it. Why?! Why am I forced to stay in the event for 30 minutes if I want a reward at all? People have lives, not everyone can stay the full 30 minutes. Why shouldn’t every minute count for something, even if it’s just a small chance to get a blossom or two as a drop from mobs?

My friends asked me why I was doing the event when they heard me complain about it. I didn’t have an answer to why as it seemed getting the selfless potion would be impossible since I have a life outside GW2. So I stopped.

Second time around for that stupid potion and I’m missing out again.

I think the problem with the invasion event is the same problem that has grown like a plant dragon for a long time. The longer GW2 goes on, the more your changes and events are to please you and not the players. It’s hard to imagine that you would actually enjoy playing the zerg type event you seem to enjoy creating and the fact is zerg farming was something GW2 promised not to force players to do.

The problem was magnified when you changed to the super server concept. The size of the zerg you encourage in a map is prohibitive to actually experiencing the event. There are too many people. It’s a nightmare to travel from one area to another and compete with a zillion people to get a hit in on some mobs so that you can actually get a reward. The mobs die too quickly because you force a zerg that takes them out before a fight can be relished.

Dying and having to travel to a waypoint is a nightmare. Even reaching the zerg is a nightmare by wp. If they are near the fight, the wp is contested. Duh. By the time you return to the fight… hello… it’s done.

I asked my friend, “do you really like this zerg thing?” He said, “Yes, I like it. I don’t like to see my character.”

Your rewards are weird. There may be one or two on the list that have obvious value, some that have mystery value and a lot, a lot, that are either too low level for any of my 20 level 80 characters or just not worth anything. What is the problem with actually being up-front and let people know what they are fighting for? I have seen it in other MMOs so there must be a reason for giving bad rewards. I wish you would remember that it costs you nothing to give a legendary rather than a nooby something. But it would make players more motivated if they saw they could ocasionally actually get something with in-game value every now and then.

I notice there are the mystery keys this time. I guess it’s a secret what they are for, but I suppose for the chest in Lions Arch. I sure hope that there will be stupendously good things in that mystery chest when it opens up.

I have been frustrated with much of the direction being taken by GW2 in the game. Some things have been good but a lot of things seem to be small-minded. I can’t overstate how much I appreciate that you have admitted the failures of this event to the players. I think it is a very good direction. I hope it continues. Thanks for that.

One thing I liked about GW 1 was its generosity to the players. I had the feeling that the developers were all excited about how good they were making the people feel. Maybe if the staff were to be a tad less focused on their own ego and more focused on the pleasures of making other people happy, GW2 could be generous too.

Yeah .. it was horrible. the time we waste to wait, the bloom rewards, the too much waypoint cost, the tag the event thing and just run to other event, i mean .. come on ..
I did the brisbane events, got 30 blooms, some junk claw, 2 blade shards and a blue because i accidentally hit a moa. after that I log out the game and not even bother to care or try anymore. the no scaling in mobs makes it more frustrating because everything died so quickly and the events ends so fast.

Reposted from reddit:

I know this isn’t Anet’s main hangout, but I prefer posting here to the official forums. This is my opinion on what would make events better in the future.

Context – For new players, this sort of event probably has little context. It’s not like the Scarlet events where we’d grown to hate her.

Something meta. It’s not enough to have us running around just tagging events. In the Scarlet Event and the Silverwaste, there’s something you can reach beyond just a personal reward by finishing the events. Here, there’s nothing but greed.

Rewards that feel like you’re making progress. The marionette did this well by giving you drops when defending the lanes. Scarlet gave us drops. This sort of event doesn’t feel rewarding. Yes it’s nice to have tokens at the end of the event, but experience and karma would have been nice too, especially for those leveling.

Don’t design an event that makes people selfish. Design an event where finishing the event is more important than tagging as many events as you can. What happens here is those who care the least about others will gain the most, where those who just want to get rewards are themselves rewarded.

Anet you should have enough experience running these events by now that this should have not really happened. Please try to remember this for the next time.
Edit: 5. For a casual player this event is impossible. No one will get enough rewards in 4 days as a casual to get anything. Which is bad because we don’t even know if these tokens will be around for another event.

while i do appreciate the honesty from the dev team without knowing more about the thought process behind the event it is impossible to help. this event has turned into a frankenstein monster…halp, we know it’s broken but we can’t stop it.

we need to know what the devs think went wrong? why are the devs so confused as to what the players want? is an open call to the community really the right way to get back on track?

guys there is nothing salvageable from this event…nothing. it can’t be ‘fixed’ or ‘improved’. there is nothing to be gained from looking at what failed with this event (everything failed). i feel confused and sad that the game is in this state.

Everybody’s talking about how much of a debacle this event is. And they’re right. But let’s look at the one good thing to come out of this event. I REALLY like the core concept of taking historical items that are otherwise unobtainable now, whether they were from living world season one or retired gem store items (grenth hood cough cough), and making them available again through live content events.

HOWEVER, the rewards need to be attainable by casual players, without farming constantly for days. Guild Wars 2 has a lot of new players coming in, and we want rewards to be motivating to them as well.

Selkirk.4218:

while i do appreciate the honesty from the dev team without knowing more about the thought process behind the event it is impossible to help. this event has turned into a frankenstein monster…halp, we know it’s broken but we can’t stop it.

we need to know what the devs think went wrong? why are the devs so confused as to what the players want? is an open call to the community really the right way to get back on track?

guys there is nothing salvageable from this event…nothing. it can’t be ‘fixed’ or ‘improved’. there is nothing to be gained from looking at what failed with this event (everything failed). i feel confused and sad that the game is in this state.

I dont know, reduce the amount of blossoms needed and instant improvement. Half them. Then the greedy players wont need to b so greedy, the ones who want to do the events properly can do the events and still get the rewards.

Here is my feedback for this the event. I will start with the positive.

1. Having a possibility of getting items that were missed is great for those that would had loved to participate back them but weren’t able to attend due to RL.

and now the negative.

1. Lack of information about blooms and merchant. We were told that the merchant would be available for several months. Will there be other opportunities to get these blooms or do we have to abandon our families and responsibilities (and possibly a few night’s sleep) for the duration of this event? If this is a 1 time deal then the amount of blooms earned is atrociously low.

2. As everyone mention, the lack of rewards is astounding. The event doesn’t even cover the cost of WPing around the map chasing events to complete. (I’m not talking tag and run) No XP, no Karma, no random drops, not even a medal telling you how well you performed. It’s really quite sad.

3. Scaling, I spend most of the fight swing at nothing cause everything (even at full health) dies before my skill animation completes. I had to actually learn spawn locations and rate and preemptively attack the spawn area. These mordrem are definitely not anything to fear all you have to do is look at them and they die.

4. Scheduling, One 30 min event every hour on alternating maps really doesn’t feel like an invasion. Random invasions ( with a a limited amount of events and time limit) on each seperate map would really make it feel like a threat. You would even end up having to defend maps at once. Imagine fighting for Kessex hills and mid way you get a notification that Brisband is also being invaded. You must now push off the invasion on 2 fronts. This would make it make it a more immersive experience.

Gaile Gray.6029:

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.

See the problem I have is that I heard exactly the same thing with the karka events. then I received nothing and the answer from support was “tough, we’ve handed out everything that we are going to”. So forgive me id I am cynical Gaile, its not with you, it with the people who choose which ones to reward.

As such I missed out on items that I very much wanted and will likely miss out again on items this time.

1: People avoid fights if they have no reason to do it, zero mob drops remove the motivation to fight, not a great move. This is especially vexing when the event includes champion mobs.

2: Event reward, each event in the game gives a little karma, silver and some give a jiggly bag, this is a superb system and it is mind boggling that these special events give nothing at all.

3: Gold requirement for rewards, we just saved Tyria so why are we having to buy our own rewards with gold, that just seems crazy. Couple that with the fact that some rewards cost up to 10 gold, any new players in the game are going to completely loose out because they will unlikely have obtained that much yet.

4: More trash filling up my inventory, why were there trophies not added to the newly expanded system where geodes, bandit crests and other such items go? Major oversight in my books.

5: Tag and run, the missions are designed to reward those that get the most event completion. Counter intuitive to the community spirit and helping one another that GW has been promoting for years. A dropped chest on event completion giving the trophy’s and a decent reward on top would dissuade the tag and run mentality. As a by-product those that loose connection would still retain partial reward as they would not have to wait for the complete map completion for it as it would be slowly paying out after each minor event instead.

6: Mobs, they die fast in the zergs and it can be hard for some players to get credit for the event if they are not fast enough or do enough damage. The current system of reward needs to be addressed as I am not sure just upping the health of the enemies would be useful or solve the situation for everyone.

7: Waiting, so much standing around doing nothing. You can not just jump in game and have some fun whenever you want, the events dictate when you can get involved and when you can not. This is not really casual friendly, enjoyment should not be put on a timer.

8: Catapults, I personally have yet to be able to use one, I know it is not required but you can not help resent someone stealing it from you after you build one. If an event has an interesting mechanic, then everyone should have a chance to use it not just 5 players who were quick enough each event. The shielding and bombs were nice and I am glad it is not only waves of enemies on a timer, which to be honest was what I was expecting.

9: Constant waypointing, you waypoint to the event complete it and waypoint to the next, because if you run then the event will be over before you get to it. Some times you waypoint and it is over anyway and you have to waypoint to the next keeping your fingers crossed. Problem here is how spread out these events are, how shot they are and the fact that we have no means to know how close to completion an event is before we go to it. An easy solution would be highlighting the event on our map showing how close to completion it is, probably would be hard to code, but it would be well worth it.

I am with everyone else and was fairly disappointed in this event, I was not expecting much but it was so badly thought through especially the rewards system. I have a lot of respect for you Arena Net because usually your content is good, but especially now because you came out and admitted that this event has flaws rather than ignoring us. I really hope you take all our opinions to heart and change things for next time because their really is no excuse for any of this as it is all fairly obvious if you simply play the game you make, look at it from a players perspective not a developer!

So just played through my second play through of things in brisban. Wow, the rewards for spending half an hour of your time are terrible. I could do a 3 year old dungeon in that time and get an infinitely better reward from doing this event. And it would not coat me coin to do it. So I got 30 blooms and around 50 silver lighter by the time I’ve way pointed around and bought my items.

And my rewards for doing said event was junk, a load of bloodstone bust, geodes. 3 watch work sprockets 5 blade shards, and more bloodstone dust.

Not even close to the effort put in to complete the event. I’m willing to bet money the only people left doing this tomorrow are the ones who want “free” gem store skins of the halo and/or horns. Everyone else will be back to business as usual. I know I will be. Words can not describe the disappointment with this “event”. Better luck next time. I’ll not be doing a 3 day event like this again.

The event, as it is, doesn’t promote a proper way of playing the game. The best result can only be acquired by “tag and run” methods, which are not how the game is supposed to be played. This is further encouraged by the fact that the rewards are abysmal and force people to aim for the best without any other option if they want to get some of the most sought after items (cosmetics)

To solve this, rewards should be slightly higher and based upon the amount of events completed by the whole map. This would let people enjoy the events in a less stressful way and stick with them in order to complete them. This would also encourage the use of commander tags not only to make huge zergs that tag events but also to properly organize different groups of players that are aimed at completing singular events, giving a higher sense of strategy to the whole thing.

John.8507:

Nike.2631:

The tap-and-run strategy needs to die in a fire. Specially “You may only be progressing 1 site of a mega-event at a time – if you log advancement at a new site before the first one is complete you lose your credit towards the first event.” Make people finish what they start or at least wait until it’s finished to start the next one. You could still partially game the system by leaving a little early, but you’d have to carefully wait to start bashing the next group until the first has completed.

This is good, but maybe not loose all your progress but have a limited reward, or bonus for still being in the event area on completion.

I like the current completion-at-any-distance rule Dynamic Events have now – if you die and way-point/slog back you still get credit even if you’re nowhere nearby. That’s a good thing and trains good habits because there are many open world events where if you get killed you should WP/slog back instead of dragging down your group by forcing them to rez a corpse when they are already pretty fully occupied.

the problem is not with the rewards…it’s the events themselves. we are sending the wrong message when we say ‘if only we could get more blooms…’

the events had no story logic to them. you waypoint to a vendor and some npc’s are blabbing around then at : 30 an ‘invasion’ starts…this lasts for 30 minutes then…gaaaahhhhhh.

the thought process behind the entire thing (from rewards and especially the events themselves) reveal a big divide between what the developers think we want and what we actually want.

I have one final question, and please don’t take this as a passive-aggressive jab at the development team, but, was this an intern developer project? The reason I ask, is that it seems to be constructed without any experience as a GW2 player, or without incorporating any of the event design experience from the past 3 years, or any of the player feedback from any of the past event failures.

Just curious. Really.

Gaile Gray.6029:

We have been tracking player response and recognize that this event has not gone as intended. […] 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.

Well I’m sad to hear you are putting off the in-game event for now.
Actually I basically like the invasion themed events since LS1 including this one.

While events in the past had issues but matured in their mechanics and incentive structure to guide participating players this one seems off.

I can only agree with the constructive criticism key points mentioned so far by many others:
1) Removing all usual game progress currencies from the event while making it so that spending lots of silver on it is a harsh break in a game where you usually can power level even by picking flowers all day long.

2) While this in itself does not make the event unfun, you made it feel so by adding the super lackluster blooms reward currency that comes at a reward scale competing Asian Super Farm NoLife-MMO gaming, since the time window is very narrow.
All that this token currency vendor says to veterans is: “Hey here are some cool rewards for people that have no life and choose to play selfish-MMO super grind style all weekend long, if you are an average customer don’t bother, as you are excluded by time window requirements that you cannot meet”
Which is actually pretty much the type of “artifical exclusiveness” that we saw people fear in the raid thread drama earlier. People don’t shy difficult, people don’t shy long term collection goals, but people often went to GW2 because it more often than competitors offers players to consume these at their own pace without enforcing arbitrary “minimum raid calendar schedule requirements” on them to even start competing.
Also concerning all the “you don’t have to raid, you don’t have to grind, you don’t have to optinal play the good stuff”-voices here on the forum calling yay for more artificial arbitrary time contraint requirement exclusiveness for “time and effort” instead of skill presented or fun had please refer to what happened to WildStar on launch when they made that mistake to listen to these vocal forum front:
It turned out they are in fact even in a game specifically tailored to their calls, a super minority and most didn’t like the endgame with all that super artificial lock-out exclusivity and just left. Keep this outcry of this event in mind when wadin through the raid-accessibility related threads here on the forum as well.

3) While i believe the event may be quite fun for new players they get penalized the most by devoiding them of leveling progress while participating.
Also the reward vendor tells them this “Sorry but you are too broke to turn in these things, so don’t bother even starting to.”

4) Suprisingly you opted to forfeit the well working zone event progress and reward mechanics from Dry Top or Silverwastes and instead decided to go with a new one that anyone was able to identify at first look at the reward tiers as a big incentive for selfish hit-and-run leeching incentiviser.
We judge you by your own set standards to innovate and are used to you NOT repeating such obvious mistakes from the far past of early Season 1. Therefore it feels extra set back here for veteran players.
On top technical issues like the start bug and progress loss on disconnect put real salt into the wound.

To conclude:
The event in itself is a quite fun little weekend invasion, but introduced mechanics and reward incentives are not.
Actually if the event had no reward track at all it would have been ok to go to and have some fun for a few rounds.
Yet the whole addition of a reward track mechanic that is utterly backwards, defective and incentivises against ALL the principles that in essence seperate GW2 from competing products just makes it sour for everyone. It does not reward any target audience but instead has a strong turn off of for everyone one may it be newcomer, veteran or nolife gamer.

The new blooms are currency.

Currency goes in the wallet, not our inventory.

I would have been more interested/enjoyed it more if there were three not terribly grindy Achievements related to the event…

• Achieve 15 stacks in a single invasion: 1 point
• Participate in invasions on all three maps: 5 points
• Accumulate 100 blooms: 5 points

…And stop. No nightmare grind-a-thon. No encouraging tap-and-run chasing after 30 stacks. Just a couple of simple goals that would commemorate the event in my Achievements log forever.

rapthorne.7345:

Would love to see either this made a regular weekend event or have this particular event extended to a week or more, to accommodate the people who can’t endlessly grind for the blooms due to work commitments.

Their reasoning seems to be that it takes place on theweekend but seeing as to how you have to be slaving the entire time over the entire weekend thats kinda creepy

I don’t mind the event, but as others said:

— Mob density too low, and hp pool way too low, you have to be a guardian with a loot stick to tag anything, even then you can still miss it if you aren’t lucky. Perhaps after every event – spawn a legendary mordrem like in Silverwastes: Demolisher/Annihilator etc.

— Rewards aren’t clear, I’ve read x-amount of player messages in map chat “we get x-blooms from x-stacks” and mostly it’s wildly inaccurate. They could improve this by doing something similar to a break bar on the map, and everyone is rewarded based on the total events completed on the map as opposed to how many you run and tag, a bit like how the scarlett meta reward was, as you progressed through waves, the rewards became better as fighting intensified, culminating in a boss fight. The bar fills up, when full – starts a new bar, reward level increases.

— Reward players per event, or as stated above, when a legendary spawns when it dies the loot chest contains blooms, another incentive to stay on your event. Remove the daily bloom cap, if players want to play your exclusive content all day long, don’t punish them by capping or limiting the blooms they get from it, that is completely unnecessary. Also increase the bloom reward for meta completion.

— Make mobs drop loot, or at least champ and above, players don’t want to do x-amount of hours of this event and not be rewarded. If it is targeting new players as well, the lack of exp, or individual event reward can be a real turn off.

Anyway, good luck improving the event, I have D/C 3 times now so unfortunately I will be opting out.

I’m probably repeating what everybody else already posted, but I don’t feel like wading through 8 pages (so far) to figure out what’s been said.

I was really excited when I found out I could get the selfless potion to go with the thoughtless potion I got way back when. Then I did the math. A lot of people are doing the math and it’s not good.

CAUTION:

It’s better to give up on salvaging the event completely and chalk it up to experience than to do a half-hearted fix. If you kind of/sort of fix it, the people who gave up on the event because it wasn’t worth playing end up getting punished for it. That is, if you make it great for those that didn’t give up on the event after it’s too late for players to get back into the event and earn blooms, it’s going to look incredibly petty and vindictive against your critics, even if it wasn’t intended that way.

If you wait until the event is over and say that the 450 bloom items are now 100 blooms, the guy that gave up with 60 blooms is up the creek.

The guy that had 120 blooms and spent 60 of them already is up the creek. He could have saved them and bought the best item.

The guy that realized the event was hopeless on day 1 and stopped with 30 blooms, but could have had 120 blooms by the last day if he had kept playing is up the creek.
*************************************************************

The event had potential. A few minor details killed it.
SUGGESTIONS:

1: Extend the event by one week in addition to its current length and announce your intention to do this QUICKLY! If you get to the end of the four days before announcing this, extend it 10 days instead. Why? Because people are giving up on the event right now (including me) because there is no way we’re spending 8 to 10 hours a day in the short amount of time left in order to earn the stuff that costs 450 blooms. If, after we have given up, you wait until the four days are up to announce we get an extra week, you will have in effect robbed us of the first four days of the event which we assumed was utterly hopeless – if you wait until the last day to announce an extension. If we knew that the event would be extended long enough to make these items attainable, we’d keep playing now instead of skipping it.

2. Give us a reason not to tag and run. Maybe we get 1 bloom for bronze, 2 for silver and 3 for gold. Put a chest at the end. Let champs have champ bags. People will stick around and fight for champ bags.

Let the NPC’s we kill drop loot. It doesn’t have to be uber loot. Just regular run of the mill loot would be nice. Give a small chance of something nice like an extra bloom, etc. to motivate people to kill as much as possible, which they can’t do if they are just tagging and running.

3: Let us build stacks of bloodlust or whatever we build stacks of off of the NPC’s in the events. Why? It’s an extra incentive to make more kills.

4: It’s a bit late for this now, but for future events, have grand events incorporated in addition to the run of the mill repetitive ones. Make them something you can do once a day for a special chest or whatever. Something like the marionette event in Scarlet’s invasion. Guilds get into events like that. Its challenging.

CRITICISM

I’ll be blunt. The whole event feels half-hearted, like maybe you normally have 20 people working on living story events and spending a month getting them ready and this time you grabbed four or five interns and told them to “Whip something up by Friday!. . . . . But don’t get any overtime! . . . . And make sure you do your regular duties first!” Okay, maybe there was a little bit of hyperbole there, but you get the idea.

My current strategy isn’t even to tag. It’s to do one event and go AFK and do something else until I get my 20 blooms for participation. Why waste all that effort for so little extra reward? When the whole event is over, I’ll take the 80 to 100 blooms I’ll have earned this way and spend them on whatever. Right now as I type this I’m logged into the game in Kessex Hills, having just done my first and last encounter in this event until tomorrow’s reset. I peek in from time to time so I don’t disconnect before I get my reward. They should make a “Demotivation” poster based on it.

The event is also kind of “grindy”. There’s no excitement. The events are too easy in terms of strategy. They take very little skill – hence my suggestion for incorporating “grand events”.

First, let me repeat from a debate in map chat earlier this evening, “They can change the game any way they want, and I can play any way I want.” I referenced fractals, dungeons, Silverwastes events, WvW, etc.

Often, what we plan in theory goes very differently in practice, and hick-ups are bound to happen. The Mordrem Invasion Events are beyond a hick-up. They were poorly conceived and seemingly poorer still implemented. Games are best when a balance between investment and reward are agreeably equal. The players get challenging content, and the company gets happy, loyal customers.

This “invasion” failed to balance. The rewards are largely unattainable without an imbalance of time investment on the part of the players such that the greatest rewards are all but unobtainable without risk to real life health and well being; ie, put a bucket under your desk, call in sick to work, food and drink are optional, and play until your fingers fall off or you die … whichever comes first.

My words seem to reiterate what has already been said over several pages, but I see a bigger concern here. I have little concern for a 4 day fluff event intended to promote an expansion I have already purchased, but consider …. I have already purchased the expansion. This does not bode well for a company that delayed the release of GW2 for over a year because, “it will be ready when it’s ready.” Now, I see $50 blown on substandard content because hype, deadlines, and catering to corp mentality trumps integrity. Shame on you Anet. Better still, shame on me. You do, after all, have my money for the x-pac. I, on the other hand, only have promises …. that don’t look very promising. Clearly, pre-purchase was a mistake; one I don’t intend to duplicate.

Food for thought.

P.S. Fix the effin Packbull that runs the north route to Indigo in SW already … seriously?

I meant to add that I appreciate being able to get gem items via in game work. Technically, I could have done so previously by converting gold to gems, but this is a more direct way and it feels nice to have another option offered to me. I know a lot of people disagree, but that’s how I feel about it.

Also, when I noticed people posting cat pix originally I thought it would be fun, but when I noticed the naming convention I realized I have to!

Here’s Pippin:

Nothing to add here that others haven’t already suggested… just wanted to to express my appreciation to the ANET team for paying attention to their players concerns.

Gaile Gray.6029:

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.

The thing I hear about most players arguing is the fact they can’t reach the rewards value at the vendor. So an easy solution would be to reduce the amount of tokens needed to exchange those rewards.

Lycan.1762:

Gaile Gray.6029:

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.

The thing I hear about most players arguing is the fact they can’t reach the rewards value at the vendor. So an easy solution would be to reduce the amount of tokens needed to exchange those rewards.

Sadly, this suggestion looks like it isn’t gonna happen. SInce the feedback here is for future events, not this one

Lycan.1762:

Gaile Gray.6029:

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.

The thing I hear about most players arguing is the fact they can’t reach the rewards value at the vendor. So an easy solution would be to reduce the amount of tokens needed to exchange those rewards.

And if they plan on changing it, do it now, or increase the duration of the event.

I think a huge part of the problem is no well-defined target audiences. It is too easy on an 80 but insane to everyone else. If someone followed the OP and said “ok, I am in the high teens so I am above the reccomended point and should be good” … well, they got a pretty rude awakening. The character I am doing it with is a character in the 50s who I am leveling … and I either die fast or everything around me dies before I can get within range of it. Then I get to run to the next thing … so I usually wind up just wishing it will get back to the top of the hour so the pain will stop.

Another way it is not welcoming to new players: no xp. Until HOT xp does not mean much to 80s, but it does to anyone leveling. There just does not seem to be much of an incentive to pre-80s to participate in this but it is in the zones they would be in.

The thing I like most of this event is the buff we get after completing events, it’s personal, it rewards those who are more eager to get faster rewards and excludes the LFG taxi craziness that usually goes on in previous similar events. This way players don’t feel unlucky for not finding the “right” map with all the hardcore farmers, because the buff doesn’t depend too much on the amount of people on a map.

Lycan.1762:

The thing I like most of this event is the buff we get after completing events, it’s personal, it rewards those who are more eager to get faster rewards and excludes the LFG taxi craziness that usually goes on in previous similar events. This way players don’t feel unlucky for not finding the “right” map with all the hardcore farmers, because the buff doesn’t depend too much on the amount of people on a map.

except….it does promote very selfish behavior with how these events are set up, and thats the big problem.

BrotherBelial.3094:

So just played through my second play through of things in brisban. Wow, the rewards for spending half an hour of your time are terrible. I could do a 3 year old dungeon in that time and get an infinitely better reward from doing this event. And it would not coat me coin to do it. So I got 30 blooms and around 50 silver lighter by the time I’ve way pointed around and bought my items. Better luck next time. I’ll not be doing a 3 day event like this again.

You don’t have to. An infinitely better reward? Really?

Everyone seemingly agrees that this event was underwhelming. You won’t be missed next time.

More feedback after my previous post. Some other issues I’ve noticed.

Immersion Breaking
The mordrem do not attack anything, by my views. The times I’m the first one to the events – as few as they are – the mordrem are literally just standing around picking daisies, even if there’s wildlife right next to them.

The mordrem should attack everything in sight.

You should never encounter a force threatening all life as we know it standing around idly with a cute fuzzy bear right next to it as if they’re having tea and crumpets!

Event Diversity
While the three events are fun, it’s not enough for a lot of farming. There should be more things to do than just “kill Vine Crawlers”.

How about some champion events? Or a capture the area events? Kill mobs like crazy events? Scarlet’s Invasion had a much wider spread of events, which made them more enjoyable.

I would also look at the BWE2 finale which had a different variety of events, and was greatly praised – party due to the open world WvW feel of it to players who lost. When dealing with temporary invasion events, it’s not so bad to let players be the bad guy (that actually makes it more fun, especially if rewards are the same either way).

The Mordrem Invasion has, effectively, one goal but different methods to complete that goal: Kill mordrem spawners.

Where’s killing champions?
Uncontesting waypoints?
Slaughtering mook mobs?
Protecting NPCs/locations?

And then some. The Mordrem Invasion would be like if during the Scarlet’s Invasion you’d have just had Destroy the Molten Alliance tunneling machine as every event. Would get boring quick, no?

An example for the Mordrem Invasion on other events possible to have:

• Dark Wings spawn across the map using the attacks from Tracking the Aspect Masters – they could either stay until killed, or like Scarlet Briar disappear via flying away when low health.
• Calm/Capture Raving Sylvari – the Mordrem Researchers say they’re there to study effects of Mordrem. Capturing sylvari who are being turned by Mordy seem like a great opportunity. Bring in environmental weapons for the capturing, to spice things up.
• HoT-exclusive champion – similar to the Dark Wing one, but staying to death and with an army of minions around it, introduce a mordrem champion type that will be featured in HoT as a preview of what we can expect to fight. Even if this figure remains in the distance like The Shatterer did during BWE2’s finale, that’d create a thematic interest to the event.
• Players being turned – since this is dragon corruption we’re talking about, experiencing such a thing for a one-time event wouldn’t be out of the question. Players who die near certain events are given a zone-specific buff that acts as a transformation and makes players hostile to other players without the buff. Giving them a brand new model that players will see as an upcoming foe’s model makes it all the sweeter.

TIME TOO SHORT
30 minute invasions only cause players to rush-rush-rush through stuff, ultimately for few rewards. It’d be better to have more time to allow things to be more casual. Overall duration of the event as well. One weekend is far too short – we learned this with The Lost Shores, why are we repeating past mistakes? Is 2 years so long that Anet needs to relearn what was learned then (not just in the event’s duration, but the other issues too)?

Events should be fun.

All of these suggestions are great and I’d agree that if even half of them were implemented it would have been a huge improvement over the ShovelWare we got.

Somebody at ArenaNet needs to take a good hard look at the big picture and ask “Is this gonna be fun?”

The sad thing is: I’ll bet everybody on this project did exactly what was asked of them.

AlsoAdelas.4901:

Here’s Pippin:

Ha Ha! Thanks for posting Pippin. Cute!

Flat out… This has not been fun. Bad launch. Too short of an event for the rewards offered. Spending too much silver on wp bouncing, for nothing but an end sack of blossoms, that will take playing hours daily to get one large reward, let alone more… sorry, you have a job? RL? Oh! here’s a sack of stuff from doing each of the 3 maps once a day… a sack of stuff I don’t need (no option for money bag). No XP. Not even trash drops. Not fun. Too short. Too little reward. Too much of a hassle.

I don’t mind a challenge, I like them. This is a “run fast, hit it with a stick, run faster, hit this with a stick…. how fast can you port around a map and hit things with a stick” in an hour and a half.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Thanks to all of you who are posting solid, substantial feedback or even just a few thoughts on the subject. The thing I particularly like is that you’re sharing constructive ideas and suggestions that the team can use in the future to offer improved events.

Thanks, and please continue to share if you have other ideas!

Honestly Gaile, many of us commenting on this thread are doing so because we know the caliber of stuff that the devs are capable of and, especially now, we want to see new players experiencing that so that the game can grow. We know that if they see some awesome stuff they will want to stick around and I hope to see some of that stuff roll out in more live bonus events. ….I also hope to see these blooms reused in future events so I can get some of the things at the merchant that I know I will not be able to get this time around :P……just throwing that out there.

Here’s all you need to know: I get more rewards from FAILING a toxic shoot event than I do from WINNING the Moremob invasion. That at least gives me xp, and coin. I get nothing from modremob events.

So I don’t know if this has been suggested yet because there are waaaay too many suggestions for me to read but here’s my summary.
Problems:
1. Loot is weak.
2. Doesn’t really get anything for new players (which I think is what it was for)
3. Encourages ‘tagging’ and running.

Possible solution: For the most part I don’t think this is a bad concept and I think a ‘fairly’ simple solution is simply to add a ‘loot’ phase to the end of the event (kinda like SW).
In general you could leave the event as is with the blooms per stack etc. At the end of the 30 mins people get rewarded for their service. But at that point some big baddy arrives with a bunch of little helpers and the mobs drop loot and xp etc. This would amp up the loot and the big baddy could have a chance to drop something rare.

I think to further the community aspect and teamwork you could attach a timer to the map to kill big baddy based off the total amount of events the map has completed. This way if the map moves in a big zerg they will finish fewer events —> have less time in loot phase. This also encourages more people to show up for full event and not just at end for loot phase…because if nobody does the event then the timer will be too short to get good loot.
Finally, there needs to be some purchasable reward for the new players. Something that u can use 5 or 10 blooms to get for almost no money that would give something useful for a low lvl player. (I don’t know – low tier crafting or something, maybe rare under lvl30 gear bag or even account bound dyes of some sort…something).

Anywho, that’s my two cents. I’ll just finish with although I’m not a big fan of the event, at least your willing to experiment with different ways of running events. Which I’ll give you props for.

SirT

Reward system was extremely flawed, as the rewards were based on a personal buff which depended on participation in multiple events, it forced people to kill 2-3 mobs and then waypoint to tag more events. The event also punished players for disconnects thus having a world-wide buff would be better. Rewards could be given to the player when this buff expired or when the next event in the same map started up again thus reseting everyone’s progression back to 0 and ensuring no loot was lost.

A slightly better approach but still flawed one would be either to include a reward which was given evenly to the entire map (this still has people afking and getting rewards as an issue).

Another way to tackle this would be to reduce the randomness of the events and force a fixed number of events in a fixed locations (similar to forts in SW).

There should also be meta-event type progression in each of these locations thus giving a reason for people to stay and continue the chain of events. This can be achieved by adding small rewards / pieces of rewards for each sub-event completed and can be combined for a better reward at the end of the chain.

Addition of some sort of time-gated progression of the meta events would de-incentivize tagging multiple events for rewards. This would address a lot of the major issues with the current system.

A mix of map wide rewards + personal rewards will also incentivize creation of dedicated guild maps to make sure everyone on that map gets a good chance of beating the event.

These events also need to last longer than just a weekend or will require a lot more information to be provided to the community before being released.

An example of personal reward would be points given for objectives, kills and killstreaks as well as the event completion itself (bronze/silver/gold).

I remember “The Flame and Frost” event with Rox and Braham. I really liked the living story complexity of the temporary event. There were achievements, searches, events, instanced events, all sorts. If I remember right there was also a temporary dungeon that unlocked. It seemed to have it all. Wish we could replay that, or have new events more like that with story and multiple styles of action available.

“This event sucks”.

There, rant out of the way. Now then…

-Tag and run off. This is a problem. And those that do it have a even “better” excuse than before because mobs don’t drop anything at all. If the intention was to prevent devaluation of current assets and materials, which I don’t believe by the way, then it’s only another sign that you misunderstand your players. They farm. You gave them avenues to farm. To restrict farming in this instance alone is an open contradiction.

-Bloom acquisition rate. I understand the bonus 20 daily, and the low bloom acquisition rate for subsequent participation, is meant to “pace” us. I’ll give you that benefit of the doubt. But three years in, you should know better than to expect your players to want to pace themselves according to your presets. Added onto this, the influx of free players are seeing for the first time, an invasion that doesn’t reward.

-Personal performance vs server performance. If I reach 10 stacks, in my mind I’ll just stop. Why bother? The reward ratio is whacked, and as stated above, unless you engage in tag and run (which is a bad, long-term systemic flaw), for my trouble I get a few more blooms, nothing more. The server will take care of the rest. This isn’t healthy. More so in a limited event time and space.

Overall, I personally feel that this event was simply not well-thought-out. It just wasn’t.

Here’s how to fix the problem of people losing rewards due to D/Cs and stop players just fighting a little in each event for a few minutes, then go to another, just to gain as many stacks as possible:

Get rid of the defender stacks.

Base the rewards on what medal they get (Bronze, Silver or Gold) when each event is completed and have the rewards be awarded then, and not at the very end of the 30 minutes.
Get knocked off the game? Not a problem as long as you get back on the game to finish the event.
Want to try and get as many blooms as you can? Just do as much as you can in each event. Doing a little to get to another event will mean you’ll lose out on bigger rewards.

See? Easy.

This may even help fix this annoying ‘No reward’ bug that still hasn’t been fixed. I finally get my wife to try the game again as she liked the idea of working for the Halo, only to have no chance of getting any, let alone enough Blooms, to get it. Bravo on that one.

The grind. Oh my gosh, the grind.

As Dark Blue said, reward players immediately after receiving each medal so players can at least choose how much grind they want to go through. Or, consider extending the event to last a week. I think a week would at least allow players enough time to shoot for the higher-cost rewards without eschewing all other commitments to friends and family to grind their faces off.

This current system is just… brutal.

I just want to throw in some things. I did like the time limit wait, at leas t the 30 minute one. 30 minute before the next invasion was good. I did not need to rush to the next map, I could take a quick break and sort out things I gain while playing. The 1 1/2 before the rest sorta sucked though, maybe trim that down to a hour or remove the wait and just keep the 30 minute blocks.

I did like the running around the map to help out the land though i guess why bother after a point, since the way stack works. I figure a two stage plan for a prize be good. Every Mordrem event stopped does have a thing on screen I notice. Maybe the amount stop could be used to convert to a prize to have people spread out to take care of them quickly, but to also stop people from just afking, they can help defeat 5 events too. Not sure how to stop the tagging unless the event you are in maybe drop something too, but that might not be the best also.

Not to sure how to improve on it more, but I am sure other people had decent idea.

How was this “event” announced? What is the reason for these mordrem attacks?
I logged into the game and got a message that mordrem were attacking Kessex Hills. At first I thought it was a bug because it looked like some remnant of the heydays of Scarlet, but when I got there people were standing around waiting for the next attack to start at half past the hour. Where can I find that information in game, or on the website?

I can’t find anything in the News section of the website: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/
and there’s nothing in that strange forum thread labelled News and Announcements (there’s rarely anything useful there).

The skins/rewards are nice enough to go for, but the event itself is bad overall. I agree with most of the criticisms on page 1.

Basically the event offers no character progression, is a huge time and gold sink and doesn’t reward any strategy, cooperation or otherwise interesting gameplay.

Just want to point out that one of the event which needs player to kill mordrem for explosive does not scale properly with the numbers of players.

Example: (numbers just for explaination)

5 Players, 5 Explosive, Vine HP scale to 5 [Low]
20 Players, 5 Explosive, Vine HP scale to 20 [HIGH]

So basically the amount of monster with explosive doesn’t scale with the number of player make it extremely difficult to get it done if there is a zerg try to kill it.

Bilacus.6104:

How was this “event” announced? What is the reason for these mordrem attacks?
I logged into the game and got a message that mordrem were attacking Kessex Hills. At first I thought it was a bug because it looked like some remnant of the heydays of Scarlet, but when I got there people were standing around waiting for the next attack to start at half past the hour. Where can I find that information in game, or on the website?

I can’t find anything in the News section of the website: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/
and there’s nothing in that strange forum thread labelled News and Announcements (there’s rarely anything useful there).

They announced it several days in advance:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-mordrem-are-coming/

And then there were tweets more recently but I don’t hold with using third party social media as a primary info flow. The only reason I see tweets at all is that I keep checking for teasers for Elite specs.

I am also not sure, but would you suggest we hold onto our bloom for a next time, or try to continue to earn away and see if we get to the prizes we might want?