Guild Wars 2

There is one thing that I don’t like about this event, and it’s the fact most people just “tag” the events and then run to the next one. Now I’ve been told multiple times in map chat that this doesn’t affect the event itself, and I understand that clearly, but my point is, that’s not how it should be played. This is a world event, and people should be working together to succeed and all.

My solution: how about adding loot from the mordrem structure/boss that spawned, this way, people would have to stay at this event until the end? I am no expert on how loot rewarding works (people could still tag, and come back later for loot, unfortunately?), but this could help.
When I participated in this event, I could get to around 10 stacks, while people who tag could get to 20+ stacks, with less effort. I feel like the loot should make it so completing (without tagging) 10 of those events would reward us with more blooms than when tagging.

binidj.5734:

Finally, didn’t you learn from Southsun Cove not to do short duration events? Absolute base minimum duration of the invasion should be a week, not a weekend.

Ditto, while I agree with most of what you said… this is perhaps the most important point. The introduction of Southsun Cove was a cool concept, but short duration events like this and that just don’t work very well, at the very least if there is a problem you have nowhere near enough time to respond and address those issues when the event is live for such a short duration.

Also, one more thing the short duration of this event adds pressure and by doing so makes the problems with the event stand out more than they would if people simply had more time (not that extending the event would be an excuse for bad design or anything like that).

the idea of this event is good, i do enjoy the concept, but the way it rewards players really badly designed i think.

i think the fundamental flaw is how Invasion Defender boon is rewarded; it give you 1 boon no matter whether you get bronze or gold for each defense, making people (i have to admit, i do it myself also) just runs into a defense land couple of hits and runs off to the next one, not rewarding players who actually stays and helps completing the defense.

from my personal view, how to make this event better (and future events similar to this)

• bonus reward for how many successful defense by the entire map (like Dry Top tier based merchant)
• bonus boons for those who get silver and additional for gold reward for individual defense, this encourages players to stay longer to help complete the defense

and now im just throwing ideas in the air.
would be cool to add in some sort of zone based territorial control,
every round (30min with 60min break per zone) will be a fight over control over a zone.
What determines win/lose at the end of each round is base on number of winning map instances / (total number of instances / 2) vs number of instances that lost. So there will be constant battles across all 3 zones, and people will taxi to a difference instance to help those in need.
i.e. 5 map instances
If 3 wins, 3/(5/2) = 1.2 < 2 map instances that lost = zone control by Mordrem.
But if 4 wins, 4/(5/2) = 1.6 > 1 map instances lost, citizens of tyria controls the zone.
So what the community does, does affect the outcomes of the world.

I feel that the timing has been rather unfortunate. =(
A lot of new low level players are being introduced to big events by this one. And it’s not a very good example because if you want the expensive items you kinda have to tag and dash away, leaping over downed players to get to next point or objective. Brrr, nope!
If you can even afford them since with all the waypointing and no loot or XP it’s a money sink. Is the thought that new players will be so frustrated they will buy gems?

My first large event was a Halloween one and it was great fun, players goofed around with each other or commiserated over the clocktower JP. Rewards was not always fanstasic but they were fun and you could with a bit of effort and time get greater ones.
I’m pretty sure that event was what made me decide to stick with GW2. =)
If this one had been my first? No thank you, bye.

It’s not the worst event EVAAARRR but the timing is very unfortunate indeed and I think it’s really important that devs listen and apply all the good advice that has been given in this thread. Because you have done and can do better than this. =)

You’ve said that you don’t want to use “the trinity” because waiting around for a healer isn’t fun; but, you consistently create timer based content that requires players to wait around until your timers say they can play. Your timers become the monks everyone is waiting for.

The obvious cure is true procedural content activation that responds to player activity.

I really hope that the “failure” of this events doesn’t make the devs not do more events before HoT comes out. Because yeah, it’s broken, the fact that you have to participate in as many events as you can instead of completing them it’s not a good way to reward players? And the price of the rewards are too high for what you get.

But the events in general are nice. The idea of them… It’s fun and exciting to go around the world (not only silverwastes and dry top) and fight the mordrem. It’s like the world is alive and mordremoth is coming. It really is coming and we can see the results of it around the world. It makes me even more excited for HoT to come out already!
So I hope the devs have more of this events until HoT comes out. Even broken, they are a new shine of light, a new thing to do.

Maybe, fix the rewards, maybe gives us loot, xp, karma…
btw i just love the animations of the mordrem coming out? like the flower thingy just spit them? it’s great

There is not much to say after 11 pages of suggestions but I’ve to share how this event changed me.

• I have stopped hitting enemies so that they can kill a player with a bomb so that I can pick it up.
• I haven’t revived people so I can be sure that I tagged the mob enough to get bronze.
• I have blinked onto the bombs and stole them even from my guild mates.
• I have tagged up to steal players from existing events.
• I have tagged every single event I can and afk’ed for the remaining 15 minutes of the event.

Consider this for next time anet. I know you were trying to keep people from leeching but it doesn’t work. Systems like this only encourage leeching. I’d rather carry a minority of people who AFK than carry a bunch of people who actively scale up events and move on.

Fao Devs

some issues during the event which are not event related

1: Loading screen currently are like 20-30 seconds (No its not my Laptop)
2: server today has been lagging badly in Event areas

The event violates some core design philosophies of GW2, it’s really sad to see. GW2 has many mechanics that foster playing together. In this event however it’s everyone for himself. The way the personal reward levels are designed reward players that “tag & run” and punish players that commit to actually do the fighting. When I see people bragging at the 20 minute mark about how many stacks they already have, I can’t help but dislike them – because I know the reason they are “winning” in this event is because they let other people do the work for them. It should not be this way, not mechanically and not socially. Was this concept tested? And if so, how did it get approved? We got so many new players coming in over the last couple of days, and we tell them how great this game is, how there is no kill-stealing, node-stealing, etc. And then, with the first “living world”-ish event you roll out for all those new players to experience, it’s this…

30 minutes and you have to stay the whole time. That’s bad.

Memories of scarlet box from the daily…what do I get 12 bloodstone dust & 6 blade shards. That’s it. If that’s what in those boxes why should I want more? How does that help anyone? I get more blade shards from my home instance node. Seriously?

The entire event is laughable.

I find myself getting to 10 events because doing 10 more for a mere 5 blooms more is not at all worth it. Once I get to 10 events, I do REAL events that give me coin & karma for doing them. I harvest. Kill zone mobs that give me drops. Even the grey vendor trash is more valuable.

I don’t want this to continue more than the scheduled time because I can’t take this level of disappointment. It breaks my heart knowing what this could have been and instead I do 30 minutes of events and wind up with stuff I can’t even vendor for a few copper.

I know it’s “just a game” but without rewards even stellar mechanics doesn’t make this event fun.

I know it’s “just a game” but when I found out first hand that if you disconnect even at the start of a zone event and you get stacks back you still get nothing..yeah I cried. I worked so hard to build up my stacks after dcing. then nothing. That hurts. For you to say “just go to the next zone and do that one”. That doesn’t help. That is salt in the wound.

At this point I’m not even counting on getting the lost rewards. Knowing how great the past events were, and how rewarding they were. And we don’t get xp, karma or coin from the events? How did anyone ever think that was a good thing?

I just don’t get how this event made it out the door.

LiQuid.3958:

There is not much to say after 11 pages of suggestions but I’ve to share how this event changed me.

• I have stopped hitting enemies so that they can kill a player with a bomb so that I can pick it up.
• I haven’t revived people so I can be sure that I tagged the mob enough to get bronze.
• I have blinked onto the bombs and stole them even from my guild mates.
• I have tagged up to steal players from existing events.
• I have tagged every single event I can and afk’ed for the remaining 15 minutes of the event.

This I have seen from most throughout the event.

It’s not a great way at all to show off GW2 to the new F2P players ..
‘Welcome to GW2..screw team work and go all out for yourself, it’s the only way you might get loot if you don’t disconnect’

The event alltogether aint that bad, yeah it’s like scarlet invasion but I liked the scarlet version and this one, But it would be better if it was abit harder, mobs die too fast, 0 drops, not even Blooms, only a small reward at the end.

Due to bugs and if you take in considerations that people have jobs and cant farm the event 24/7 I’d like to suggest to extend the duration of the event to atleast last 1 week alltogether, so even rhose with jobs can get the wanted skins and stuff. Or atleast make Blooms tradable

Edit: and it would be a nice thing if you give every player that participated in the event a reward to make us abit less angry, like 50Blooms for everyone

Dark.4956:

LiQuid.3958:

There is not much to say after 11 pages of suggestions but I’ve to share how this event changed me.

• I have stopped hitting enemies so that they can kill a player with a bomb so that I can pick it up.
• I haven’t revived people so I can be sure that I tagged the mob enough to get bronze.
• I have blinked onto the bombs and stole them even from my guild mates.
• I have tagged up to steal players from existing events.
• I have tagged every single event I can and afk’ed for the remaining 15 minutes of the event.

This I have seen from most throughout the event.

It’s not a great way at all to show off GW2 to the new F2P players ..
‘Welcome to GW2..screw team work and go all out for yourself, it’s the only way you might get loot if you don’t disconnect’

To be fair, we end up like this at level 80 in Silverwastes anyway. But yeah, to get new (f2p) players involved in this in low level areas, I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of them straight up abandoned the game

I ran my personal numbers on if I could actually obtain either one of the Selfless/Thoughtless Potions in time prior to the event ending. Right now I currently hold 140 Mordrem Blooms. I know I’ll get 60 per map for the daily reward which is guaranteed so that puts me at 200 (260 if this event goes past Sunday at reset). Best case scenario only requires me to get 190 Mordrem Blooms on my own. Ok. So say I get 10 blooms per map, that only leaves me with 19 map events to complete. Hey that’s not that bad.

But wait! Anet loves time gated stuff. So that means I now have to invest 19 more hours of my weekend just to get a shot at the potion. Oh, wait that’s wrong, make that 25 more hours because of a break in the invasion. I have a life outside of Guild Wars 2 where I can’t dedicate a full kittening day of playing this game. Please, next time don’t let your ‘intern’ design an event and then release it prior to the weekend. Remember Golem week?

As for ways to make this better, Tiemen.8427 couldn’t have said it any better. You need to seriously put this person on your payroll, compensate him/her for their post or give them a Legendary. Best of luck to those who can grind out the rewards they want. I hope you get them in time. I am giving up for now. I will have to wait and see if Anet does any follow up to this event in the days to come.

Some quick thoughts:

In general, I don’t get the exaggerated hate people are giving the event in general.

None of the items are particularly exclusive and if you really want one of the potions, between being diligent about the daily bonus and watching the timer, you’ll get it before the event is over as long as you maintain silver+.

The selfless and selfish potions weren’t easy to get the first time and they shouldn’t be easy to get this time either.

Yes there are some issues with the event, but there’s some good ideas here as well that can be improved on.

The good:

I like the counter idea for meta-events completed within the event.

This kind of system essentially forces people to participate, there’s no real AFK room and I can really appreciate that.

At certain numbers people can (and will) drop off and that’s fine (human condition, GIFT, life), but they absolutely cannot tap something and AFK before that point.

That’s a great anti-AFK system for events.

The bad:

The events themselves are not designed around this system.

Anyone that over commits to a particular event is at a disadvantage to someone who does just enough to get credit and move on.

Ideas:

Either people need to be rewarded for committing to a particular meta event to be viable VS people who tap and move on, or/and maybe design events around tapping multiple meta events in this type of system.

e.g. “Thanks for the support character, X could really use your help now, get to it!” and promote moving around multiple meta events within the event.

Either way works. Maybe accommodate both?

Conclusion:

It’s an event. It’s not horrible. Nice break from the dry spell of activity from now till HoT (not including the beta events). Rocky start.

I trust the devs are going to get people who missed blooms their blooms and they’ll certainly learn from this going forward.

I wouldn’t be against extending the event for a day if Anet decides they still want to play with the community.

But if they feel this event just wasn’t up to snuff and given the outrage from most people, I’d understand not wanting to stand in the fire and wanting to wrap this up ASAP.

Please extend this event longer than Monday. Maybe another week or 2. Some of us don’t have time to grind out 15-45 blooms every 2 hours. The map bonus is great. Is it possible to extend this event another week?

I have essentially given up on this event. I loved the idea, and really thought it would be sort of a scaled down version of the Silverwastes which encourages players to cooperate. Instead we get a reward system that encourages tag and run, and even then the rewards are paltry compared to the effort you have to put in to get them. It also highly discourages player cooperation.

If you were rewarded blooms based on event completion, say 1 for copper, 3 for silver, 5 for gold, the rewards would be much improved and would be based on actual completion rather than tag and run. I am one of those who actually finishes an event and I can usually get 10 events in the one run. That would increase the reward participation for actually finishing events to 50, and if you add a daily chest bonus based on the number of events completed (say, 1 per event completion), it would make the rewards fit more with the effort put in. It would encourage players to group up and actually run and complete events. It also would make the costs at the vendor more in line with the effort put into it.

Since changes can’t be made at this time, I really hope a fixed version with the same Mordrem Blooms rewards will come about again. Until then, I will be avoiding the maps with these events. It is a waste of my effort as it currently is.

The problems have been laid out clearly, I’ll just relate my personal experience.

First of all, I was very surprised that there were no achievement points. I spent several minutes looking around the achiev panel thinking ‘well, maybe it’s filed under this …’ The beta gets achievements, but not in-game events, so that was my first inkling that this was quick and dirty. Second tip-off was no karma/experience, which was a shock. Was wondering if I’d done something wrong, missed an objective, didn’t do enough damage, etc. So my first impressions were of utter confusion. This is not even including the bugged rewards, which I am willing to cut some slack for.

So now I’m grinding out a few events not knowing what the rewards are supposed to be and not having a dev clarify this point. Knowing that rewards were based on individual stacks rather than map objectives (which is only shown in Brisban anyway) would have helped me feel I had a direction and goal. So more confusion and hoping that I’m doing it right.

Then we find out the reward structure and the tag and run strategy goes into full force. OK, I get it, but I’m not that type of player. I continue to do what I do, see events to the end, try to get figure out where people won’t bother to go, see how high I can get my stacks. Well, it’s not very high and I sometimes didn’t reach 10. Getting 5 blooms felt bad, but getting 20 stacks for the max didn’t feel like something I wanted to do either. So my goal was 10 stacks. That gives me time to do things my way, rez people along the way and have a feeling of accomplishment.

Then I began noticing that 10 was harder to get sometimes, even if I was at 6 or 7 at the half-way mark. After thinking about it, I realized it’s because of the prevalent attitude of tag and stack then afk. I can’t tell you how much this comes up in map chat. Also people complaining that they are off-pace and won’t make 20, so it’s afk time. I used to get upset at these people, but it was pointless and they were only playing the game the way it was designed. Maybe not intended, but designed.

Now I am one of those players that rush to get their stacks and then go gather til the event ends. At one point I noticed myself running over the corpses of players because OMG I need stacks! and was saddened, but couldn’t bring myself to care that I was now part of the problem. I still only try for 10 stacks because more than that is too frenetic for me, but I get it and then done. At this point I’m only planning on doing the daily map anyway because … it’s not worth it. I thought it might be and was farming for a bit, but then my brain kicked in and said ‘why? The Scarlett boxes are worth the daily to me, but I haven’t gotten anything good from them yet and have don’t really expect to, but worth a shot, right?

The timer for the events is a mixed bag. I get that downtime is a good thing. However, the half hour in-between events seems like wasted time to me. It’s not long enough to do much of anything else, so I find myself trying to figure out ways to fill that time instead of doing what I prefer to do. I think I’d have preferred a 15 minute break between maps and then a full 3 hour cycle between maps if you have to have it. I was comparing it to the Labyrinth and I much prefer the Lab to this. With that I can jump in and out at any time, not worry about timers and staying the whole half-hour. Well, that and the Lab is actually rewarding. Sure, it can burn you out, but it’s my choice and it’s open to me at any time.

Woodenpotatoes pretty much sums up everything wrong with this event here:
https://youtu.be/xwiszvYyRBU?t=14m39s

It was surely wrong to charge gold on top of the ridiculously scarce blooms. I am personally turned off by the way the rewards are set up. They should have been based on how many events your map completed and that would have fixed most of your problems with the rewards.

While the events themselves are done pretty well, I was pretty turned off by how the rewards were done and found it to be way too much of a grind and that I was not accomplishing anything. I decided I would not bother as there are far more rewarding things I can do with my time in the game, despite there being rewards I really want from this event. I know a lot of people feel this way as well.

I get that things happen and don’t always work out despite all the effort the devs put into these events; which by the way is still appreciated. My suggestion to make this up to the players since you cannot change this event at this time is to maybe run it again, but with some of the changes I and woodenpotatoes have suggested, or at least put these rewards back in the game through mastery vendor access and/or future events. I would also suggest that all map events like this tier up for the map as a whole.

I only have one question. Am I going to get compensated for the blooms that I didn’t get yesterday or will I only receive compensation for the ones that I didn’t receive before you “fixed” it?

I logged on yesterday and did Brisban Wildlands and got only the 5 in the bonus chest. I went on and did Kessex Hills and again only got 5. In total I did 3 zones and didn’t get rewarded for the stacks, I only got the bonus chest of 5 blooms. I did get the correct, or what I think was the correct, amount of blooms for Diessa Plateau.

I feel like i dont need to say anything about the stuff 438038 people have already complained about. You already know that people want more blooms. But, I’d honestly like to see something like how the maze in the Silverwastes works, with awards being giving to an entire map based on overall event completion (that worked in tiers), as well as awards for individuals.
Like, the entire map can try to work to defeat 40 or so invasions to get tier 3 rewards, but for each event that a player did, they also get X amount of silver and experience depending on their participation level. In my opinion, this would encourage folks to work together and stick around to complete events instead of bouncing chaotically from event to event to tag as many as possible. And I want tiers because i think if there wasn’t some sort of cap, people would turn into jerks trying to boss people around to get maximum rewards.

I also like the idea of having some sort of climax at the end instead of ‘oh uh…everything’s leaving now’. And do we really need that hour break? I think a break is necessary because folks will get burned out if stuff is going forever, but the 30 minute break is enough.

Since anet has said they can’t fix and won’t fix this event because there is not enough time… and have apologized for it… I suggest they send every player who has participated in this event a ‘gift — of — acknowledgement’ that contains all of the skins and potions they were not able to earn because of the failed design of this event. They should also include gold, a few karma jugs and tomes of knowledge to make up for not rewarding these items during the event – to help the players, new and veteran, but especially the new ones, regain some progression for all of the time that was wasted during the event.

Anet needs to do more than just acknowledge this fiasco.

I got booted near the end of events three times now, and twice placed in an event starting all over? Outside of the timer schedule? (That’s what it seemed like), so basically I had to grind for almost an hour to get 30 min. credit. The third one I was simply out of luck, with no opportunity to get that Zone again that evening. My other frustration is it takes a whole evening to try and get each area done once, if i can even get all three done. So what I have done to ward off being bumped is to stop doing the event aprox. 10 min. before it ends and just hang out in the zone waiting for it to end. Adding to all the wait time for it to begin. I also don’t really understand the rewards because I joined GW2 after the Scarlet invasion. So would it be a waste to try opening the Box of Memories if I wasn’t collecting the spinal parts before? (But I want Dreamthistle skins), And The Dusty Sachel rewards list seems skimpy compared to the Scarlet Box, but I would like the stuff to create Mawdrey. Why are skins and dyes not avail. in the Sachel too? The game play of the Events isn’t that bad of a grind IMO. I like that you put the Watchwork Moa in the vendor list at a price I can obtain. It will be the only thing I will have to show for all the hours of work, plus a few materials richer. (if I only open the Dusty Sachels). I would like to see more opportunities to get Claim Tickets for skins in the Game. Those should show up as Event rewards. Or is it Anet’s goal to make sure people can only collect maybe one skin of each type before it is gone?

seabhac.5346:

Since anet has said they can’t fix and won’t fix this event because there is not enough time… and have apologized for it…

Just wanted to point out, apologizing involves saying sorry, and Gaile’s OP is blatantly unapologetic.

“We have been tracking player response and recognize that this event has not gone as intended.”

Just say it, you guys screwed up.

Now I’m not saying anything as as stupid as “we deserved a better event”, in fact this event did more harm than good and we’d have been much better off if it never happened

Truth.5279:

Why is this such a big deal?
Anet, I enjoy this event. I think it’s fun. I do not understand why people play a portion of the game they don’t enjoy and then complain with nearly no end while doing it. Do something else.

I agree with you. It is not a big deal. There are enough games out there, that are fun. So if that is how events are designed in GW2, I will just go do something else. People like me, who missed season 1 onwards, how should we know that there have been events actually fun to more than 3/100 people.

It is a shame for a very beautiful game, interesting mechanics, but other than that, not a problem to move on, for me. I am not sure that is what Anet wants to achieve though. So I personally am VERY glad that there are people who take time and effort to suggest ways to make the game more fun for more people. Even those who are only doing the “complaining” without too many suggestions, are sticking it out.

I am not sure you would like “your” GW2, if all the complainers just silently left, as you suggest. Kinda tough to do SW with just 3 people, I think.

And two more 30 minute attempts to get a meager 10 blooms, even trying to skip to the next event before the current one is completed. This is really sad that I need to learn how to better tag the events to get my quota of 10 stacks before time runs out. Thought I was good this last one with 9 stacks and almost four minutes left when I started an event. But of course it was a catapult event and there where not enough people to even get it half way dead when time runs out.

Sorry Anet but I’m just totally done with this event. I wasn’t a huge fan of it before the update when I first played it but the whole mechanics behind it is just wrong. Never-mind the fact there are no rewards like karma or experience, never-mind the fact that the blooms are so few that you would have to do this every day and get huge buff stacks for the event just to get the most expensive item in the merchant plus 10 gold, never-mind also the fact that this event promotes a level of selfishness that’s unbecoming of the community, what really burns me is the fact that Anet SHOULD KNOW BETTER. They’ve had bad events in the past and have gotten feedback on them and have come out with fun, more rewarding events as a result. For them to come out with THIS imo there’s no excuse. Really disappointed Anet.

I have to agree, im struggling to even remain interested in the event.

If there are no relevant rewards and or they are not reasonably accessible, like only playing the event during sat and sun, might as well not do the event at all.

Wall of text… sorry. Hopefully there is something helpful in here at least.

This event had so much potential to begin introducing things HoT related. Mordremoth is invading, but with what? random vine crawlers spawning waves of mobs. From a story perspective, you have to ask why? This could have been a great way to introduce some villainous characters, ‘Generals’ of Mordremoth or something, leading the attacks. At least that way there would be some kind of structure to it from a story perspective. Considering how focused you were on the story of LS S2, to the point where those asking for challenging content (or improvement on the existing end game content) it was forsaken because of the importance of the Story, it is surprising that the story has been ditched so clumsily. A year ago, the focus was solely on the story. Now, there appears to be no focus at all.

Instead we are left with Mordremoth invading Tyria, apparently expecting to make an impression by spawning a couple of champs every now and then. If this is the beginning of his master plan, I don’t think he’s much of a threat, and honestly, if the events did fail, who cares? There are no ramifications. So maybe we should just our feet up and watch all the poor, new, f2p players run around like headless chickens thinking that somehow these events will benefit them? Because they mistakenly trust that huge zone-scale meta events wouldn’t be put in the game for absolutely no reason at all.

From a general player perspective, if these events included some of the new mobs we’ve seen in the beta, it could have been some helpful training for everyone to learn some new mob mechanics, and it could have built on the reason for the invasions.

From a veteran player perspective, it was nice to have a way to earn LS S1 rewards again, though some other of the rare S1 drops would have been nice to see, like Scarlet’s rifles, and better access to the triforge keys. But the grind… I am not opposed to grinding. In fact, when there are exclusive rewards, I welcome it. The items as rewards have meaning, and actually feel like a reward. I’m not even opposed to the number of blooms needed for the more expensive items. The gold needed, however, is over the top. Especially seen as, someone who has farmed these events long and hard enough to get enough blooms, has probably already spent a lot of gold on wps already. Although those items may have had that gold tag on them before, they did NOT have the wp fees necessary for the current events.

Rewards and pricing aside, grinding doesn’t have to be boring. But these are. SW is a good example of this. But these events are repetitive, there is no challenge, no team work, and it is every man for himself.

Also, forcing people to take a 30 minute break in between each invasion, then 1h 30 minute break before the next round actually proves more detrimental. I know that the intention is to force us to play in little chunks (because it’s better to be casual? because you want to deter hardcore farmers?)… but why do you get to decide how I play the game? For those farming these events for blooms, instead of getting each map done in 1h 30 mins (if they ran back to back) they actually spend 3 hours doing events.

30 mins isn’t long enough for anything. Dungeon tour, Fractal dailies, it’s not even long enough to do my grocery shop. I know I am not alone when I say that I think these events should be continuous (by all means put in a break every now and then if you really want us to go outside that badly…), but the current spoon feeding of events and all the waiting… is actually preventing a lot of people from getting the rewards they wanted, and it’s godkitten patronising having my game time managed for me…

It just baffles me that after what had been ‘learned’ and improved from last time is suddenly completely forgotten.

From a new player perspective, these events are at best, an inefficient use of time, and at worst, actually, encouragement to stop playing. There is no team play, no xp gain, no gold gain, no loot whatsoever… It would actually be more beneficial for a new player to complete the zone, which is actually a hell of a lot easier when there aren’t 50 people insta-killing the bandits you need to kill to complete a heart.

I really feel for the new guys, because this was specifically paired with the f2p drive, and the find a guild and be a part of a guild because look! these events are coming! But guilds have no place in these events, and neither do new players. In the end, if this is what GW2 living world events are like, then why should they bother playing at all? So much potential. Hopefully next time you will be building on the success of Silverwastes, to improve, and vary it further instead of falling back to the mistakes of 2012.

The map bonus is the only way to make it close to worthwhile, but even then, I’m not planning on playing it any more than I already have. Cashed out my blooms for Scarlet boxes, and I’m done.

It’s just too tedious and lacking in fun. Rewards aren’t everything, but I’ll have more fun playing Silverwastes, world bosses, or just about anything else, regardless of the reward.

Shame for all the people who want the Selfless/Selfish potion.

Let’s say you do all three maps for the bonus each day (60 blooms per day,) and get the full 15 blooms for event tagging.
Fri(60 + 45) + Sat(60+45) + Sun(60+45) = 315

You need another 135 blooms to reach the 450 needed for a potion, so that’s another 9 invasions if you get 15 blooms each. (135/15=9)

At this point, you’ve done at least 18 invasions, which is 9 hours of pretty active play. Not very challenging or interesting play, but you can’t shut your brain off if you’re constantly tagging events and waypointing to the next one.

Speaking of waypoints, you’ve lost something like 7g on waypoint costs (~2s / waypoint * ~20 waypoint / invasion * 18 invasions), on top of the 10g it costs to buy a potion. Besides blooms, you’re not getting any gold, karma, or loot from this event besides the Vine-Covered Chest. 18 invasions = 18 Scarlet Boxes, so you might get lucky…but I wouldn’t count on it.

On top of the 9 hours of play, you have half an hour between events, plus the hour between cycles. If you play through 6 invasions a day, you’re either padding your time commitment enormously, or you’re dropping in and out of the game for half an hour at a time. I’m glad the devs realize things aren’t going as planned, but for a weekend event, these numbers are absurd and insulting.

I could wall of text here like so many have, but I won’t. I’ll just say it feels as if we’re fighting for scraps anymore. For the time invested, it’s not worth it.

I reinstalled the game on Thursday, saw that an event was planned and waited until yesterday to try to see if I wanted to get back into the game for the expansion.

I checked out the vendor when the event started, and saw the 2 gloves and shoulders skins. “Awesome!” I thought, “I’ve always wanted those skins, I’m totally up for an evening of grinding to get at least one set.” I did one meta event, saw that I got 25 blooms and thought “huh, I guess that’s not too bad”… Until it was brought to my attention that 20 of those came from a DAILY reward chest, and then that the events were only taking place once an hour or so, in one zone only. I had to go back to the vendor to double check the cost (and OTT gold cost as the extra kick in the teeth) of the rewards.

If I did every event over the whole weekend without sleep or paying a blind bit of attention to my partner, I -might- have got some of what I wanted. If this is a sign of the quality of things to come, I’m glad I haven’t bought the expansion to be honest.

I just don’t get why it would be impossible to fix this event. Does it mean that there won’t have time to fix it before it’s over or it’s soooo complex that it could break a lot of stuff? As a programmer myself I understand how these stuff works and how hard it can be but despite all I don’t think the last would be even true, this event doesn’t have any other so different mechanics from any other part of the game.

I really think it was a miss of opportunity from anet part of showing people the monsters they gonna bring on in Hearth of thorns.

I played beta and it was great to rise my expectations. I think if they used mordren guards and sylvary turned monsters with the diferente mechanics they developed they could tease players to buy the expansion. Pitty…

SoDeep.1739:

Please extend this event longer than Monday. Maybe another week or 2. Some of us don’t have time to grind out 15-45 blooms every 2 hours. The map bonus is great. Is it possible to extend this event another week?

They could very easily fix this by cutting reward costs on the vendors to 10% of current with 1 being the minimum.

If there is any sense to the way the engine is programmed, this is a quick change in constant values and presto. If you cant do it live, just dissable the vendors, make the change and enable them once the event is over.

It is no technical challenge to address this.

I understand this isn’t an actual world event, its just an event. An opportunity we were gifted with to earn season 1 rewards we missed out on and to give new players a chance. But what i don’t understand is how drastically different the characteristics of this event are compared to other content we’ve seen in HoT or even any of the season 2 chapters. It should be obvious by now to the devs what the community dislikes about the event based on the numerous walls of text so i wont repeat it, but arenanet’s communication with the community is absolutely amazing so i think it would be very assuring and damage controlling if they were to explain how this happened. How did such a lack luster event setup and delivery happen? Why does this feel like an event made by arenanet on release rather than arenanet HoT?

With that said we should respect and appreciate the honest communication we’ve already had.

Dear Anet,

Don’t worry about what new players think of this event, I just talked to 2 people I had coming over from WoW with f2p and they didn’t understood a thing about this event and thought it was vague as hell. They don’t participate in the event at all. They just enjoy walking through the different maps and exploring right now looking at the pretty pixels etc.

Unfortunately I cannot enjoy this event as intended. For many of the reasons posted above and the fact that I work mostly all weekend so I get to miss out on the chance to get the things I missed when they first came out due to the same reasons.

When it first started I attempted the event and had no clue what was going on, got so many stacks and yet wasn’t reward (yes I’m aware of the fact we should be rewarded sometime in the future for that but with past experiences with that statement I’m not holding my breath either)

I think this event would have been better if it was implemented properly and with more information on it as well, rather than blindly trying to figure it out for ourselves. I also hoped that I could cash in on several of the exchange items but once again my work schedule won’t allow to play enough to get the items that I do want. Hopefully you will re-release this event with a longer playable time and it dispensing items correctly. I’ve probably only caught like 2 or 3 events over the course of the weekend so far and with the reward system as it is I can barely purchase anything and none of that is what I was hoping to be able to purchase from the vendor as well. Very disappointed. Not casual gamer friendly in any respect.

I’m glad that there’s been at least an ANet response to this. I’ve just suffered at the hand of this bug as well. Just did all of the Kessex Hills event and did not receive anything for my participation, although I got gold for almost every single piece of my participating.

I’m relieved to know others have been experiencing it, but disheartened that it’s happening in the first place.

Here’s some of my feedback:

1. No achievement points equals lack of incentive to do the event at all for me. I actually have 80% of the rewards offered by the NPC. I’m just farming for the gloves and I’m done. I’m also one of those achievement obsessed people and was really disappointed that I can’t get any APs.

2. To get the stacks needed for the max amount of blooms possible (20 for tier 4) means to cheat a bit and play against other players in tagging wars. It’s physically impossible to get max reward while doing the event in a proper way – you are forced to jump in, tag mobs and run to the next event, leaving the current one to other people to finish. I just do 10 events every time to get tier 3 and then I go AFK for the remaining 10-15 minutes. I’m never sure if I will be able to tag 10 more events for tier 4, so I don’t need that stress just to get 5 more blooms.

3. Mobs and champions give no XP, loot or karma. This is really bad. Mordrem should at least have a chance to drop some extra blooms.
For new players XP from mobs should help them level up. You advertised it as an event for new players and they can’t get XP (aside from event completion reward), see the irony?

4. The amount of blooms you can get during the events is too low. I get it that these were trading post items for gems, but still just few days to get them with this drop rate is not enough.

5. The event itself is really boring. No plot, no NPCs, no dialogues, no achievements, no drops from mobs. Even the rewards for blooms are not that interesting if you’ve bought the items from the gem store or did the past living story events. This is just recycled content and looks like it was made poorly over the weekend with minimum effort (which I’m sure is not true, but that’s the impression people get).

6. Bugged launch was pretty bad. You know it, we know it, nothing to add here.

P.S. While the event is atrociously bad, I still love Guild Wars 2, I’ve pre-purchased the ultimate version of the expansion, loved BWEs and I’m with you guys. Just give us better toys to play with, pretty please!

P.S.2 When in doubt remember, Marionette was the thing done right!

I’ve given up. I wanted to get 4 of the armor skins I missed during season 1 (and subsequent gem store sales). The time required will take so much of my weekend that it’s impossible for me to complete. 225 × 4 = 900 blooms. In the 96 hour event window you can only get something like 1320 blooms. It’s mid day Saturday and I only have 85 blooms. It’s now impossible to get all 4 of the skins I wanted. There’s no reason for me to continue.

I like the events. The system for obtaining rewards is the problem. There’s also no word on if this event will ever return or if there will be more ways to obtain blooms in the future.

I hope that the fallout from the event, all of the negative player feedback in map chat, doesn’t scare away new players. Anet sure created a very negative image of themselves to new players that are exploring these maps.

So. We’re now 3 days down in the Mordrem invasion event, and complaints definitely racked in.

While it was clearly meant for a fun event to both introduce new players to world-wide event and a way to make older players have access to rewards they might’ve missed last season, there’s a load of little things that instead just pulled new players away and turned it into a grind for the rest.

So, what went wrong?

· Players feel under-rewarded/Rewards are too low: No karma/experience gained per complete event, low amount of tokens awarded compared to the given effort (30 minutes of active* play), waypointing costs usually get up to a ~30 silver loss per blitz.
· The events feel boring/The events encourage tag-and-run: To get the maximum amount of bloom, cooperation isn’t encouraged as much as sticking around long enough to secure credit, then run off. Players who do the whole event end up sacrificing their own personal rewards and end up bitter.
(*Active, meaning hands on keyboard and no breaks or time for a breather, whisper a friend about how you’re doing the event and that they need to stop whispering you, use the little warrior’s room, get your cat off the desk, etc etc.)

There’s probably more to that list, but you can simmer it down to a few core points:
The only way to get “good” rewards is to disregard group completion and instead tag-and-run, and even when doing that, people feel under-rewarded.

There’s a great deal of ways of dealing with all of those problems, and I trust ANet to do as they’ve done before: Take what’s good of a flawed event, and build up from those pieces.

Now, here’s a little list of ways to improve this event, both my ideas and some gathered from players:

· Have the events give experience/karma: Without those, new players have barely any reason to participate apart from simply stumbling on one of the active maps. It would also give ‘veterans’ another reward. Perhaps to restrain turning it into a karma farm, have the rewards cut in half. Something is better than nothing.
· Give the event mobs a chance to drop blooms: One of the biggest complaints I see on almost every map is how getting enough blooms is hard and unfun due to spending a Lot of time running, tagging, rince and repeat over 1:30/3 hours. Giving the event mobs a chance to drop blooms would ease that, and let people reach their goals more easily
· Extend the time limit for the event itself OR lower the 20 bloom gold rank: What I’ve seen in a lot of maps is people playing for the whole duration of the event, reaching about 16-17 stacks as the event ends, and feeling like they’ve pushed some effort for nothing. Giving more time or making the top reward more accessible would allow players to actually do events properly, without having the stress of having to waypoint-run-tag-waypoint.

If need be, let’s look at two other “farm” events that exist in the game: the Cursed Shores event chains, and the Silverwastes. People run, tag, but there’s an incentive to finish events for rewards, and people definitely feel rewarded for doing them.

I’d personally love to see this event come back as the expansion comes, to ease traffic on the new maps or simply to give people another chance. At its core, it’s definitely not a bad event. Perhaps having a few days per month during the expansion where Mordrem invade around and let people try to go for those old rewards.

Do feel free to reply with ideas and ways to make this event better! This is a long post, but if you’ve things to add, please do.

Yikes, 12 pages. These opinions have probably been already expressed somewhere in them, sorry but I can’t read through that much to find out.

I’m glad you tried to solve the prior problems of people using the events to farm champions instead of completing events, but I don’t think this is the solution you’re looking for heh.

I would support something that does away with the mindless desperate rush to tag something before it dies. I was running around with near-permanent swiftness, one fast melee weapon, one ranged weapon and 3 gap closers and even then it often wasn’t enough to get a hit in. There were events where I was around killing things and rezzing players for the entire duration and didn’t get any kind of participation medal at the end (or increase in whateverthatbuffwascalled), I still don’t really understand why.

Participation rewards not based around tagging, things that encourage cooperation rather than competition, a map-wide goal to strive for, more aggressive de-leveling or player power standardising, more frequent rewarding (eg. 1→3 blooms rewarded for bronze→gold participation at the end of each event, gold only applicable if present for the end of an event, or something), more varied roles available for participation (thinking like with the hydra queen or claw of jormag, I like that a few different participation options are available at once, not just killing things), are just some thoughts off the top of my head.

I definitely don’t think mobs/champs should go back to dropping stuff. But event rewards are nice motivators. I had originally thought that this event might be a nice memorable way to level up one of my alts, but that idea didn’t last long heh.

It’s a pity, because I was so excited to see a return to world-changing events. But it just reminded me of that time a few weeks ago when I tried going back to Orr to try farming some materials, where it was just hammered home for me how much better the set up in the Silverwastes area is. This event feels like a step backwards to days of Orr rather than a step forwards.

I’m very much looking forward to your next attempts though =)

Thank you very much for asking for feedback. I’m sorry this event didn’t turn out the way you wanted.

You guys and gals are well aware of what players like and what they don’t. There is no conceivable way someone looked at this stuff internally and were like, “Yeah! They’ll really dig that! Ship it!”

How about some honesty and give us reasons why this went out in this sorry state instead. How about delivering the quality stuff you are capable of. I personally am so tired of the hit or miss content in this game. For every Battle for LA there is a Mordrem Invasion. For every loot filled Pavilion 1.0 there is a Halloween Year #2. For every Year #1 Halloween there is a Christmas Year #2 where something doesn’t work for the entirety of the event.

You guys are creating a habit of spotty content instead of a habit of consistent quality.

In my mind just adding drops for the mobs we kill would do a lot to increase player acceptance of the event. Also, your reward scale where you gain 15 blossoms if you do 20+ events is flawed. There is no way you can do 20+ events and see each event through to its conclusion. Thus you encourage players to abandon an event before it is finished in order to “tag” on another event in the hopes of gaining the elusive 20+ mark. These tagging players, in turn, hope that enough players remain at the event they just left in order to complete it. This is causing animosity in the community between players who are seeing an event through to its conclusion and players trying to tag on as many events as possible. Not a good team building exercise by any means.

I totally agree with Kai ! It is unrealistic to ask people to spend 30 mins, get no drops, and come out with 5 blooms as a reward?

I was here for all the other invasions, mobs dropped “something”, now there is nothing. I make more farming Orr, than I do participating in an evasions, where people are only concerned with tagging mobs and moving on, while running over the dead bodies of the fallen.

I find myself being on the losing end, because I refuse to leave a man/woman behind, and I stop to pick them up.

Please do take what is said in context. The events would be more challenging if they were more like the scarlet and lion’s arch events.

In all honesty, kitten off with the champion bags. They destroy more than that they add to the game.

Pretty amazing as well how you make things like account wide magic find, gold find, bonus karma and then come up with this event. Its not even just this event, the entirety of silverwastes not dropping loot invalidating all the MF/gold find players got on their accounts, well played Anet, well played.