Guild Wars 2

Gaile Gray.6029:

I see a couple of valid questions:

• Will blooms be useful in the future?
• Will the items currently on offer be returning?

I will ask about those tomorrow — it’s the weekend here in Bellevue — and will answer as soon as I know more. I’m sorry that I cannot give that information today, but I truly do not know the answers to those two questions.

A note, please: The moderators continue to report comments to me with questions about their value. I think I covered this, but as a reminder: Someone commenting “I don’t like this” or “I did it and I quit” or “I had lag and it’s your fault” isn’t helpful. Why? Not because that person is being “negative” or because we’re in denial about what they believe is a network issue, but because they are not offering any points of action, any suggestions, anything that helps us with the objective of this thread.

Commenting "Rewards would be improved if you [offered this] or “I’d like to see this event again if you [did that]” is the sort of info we’d very much like to see. Why? Because we want constructive ideas that help us make future events that are fun, meaningful, rewarding, and involving.

There are many, many helpful ideas in this thread, both large and small, new and old. Thank you to those who are contributing in a constructive way.

TL:DR Don’t read feedback in this thread. Read feedback in a thread about an event that was similar to this one, but that the community liked. Build on something that was a well-liked event. Does that make sense? Like, this event should have built better ideas on top of events that people liked like the Aetherblade Invasions. Instead, this event was a husk of that event. The Aetherblade Invasion Event should have been the baseline for this event and this event would have just been better because you took feedback for that event that happened in Season 1 and you just made it better by iteration. There wasn’t any iteration in this event. It feels like it was slapped together and that’s as diplomatic as I can be about it.

In terms of constructive feedback, I feel like someone could say this event felt hollow compared to Living World Events that have happened in the past that were similar in design. What do I mean by that?

Let’s look at the Aetherblade incursions that happened in season 1

• The enemies in that event dropped loot, gave karma, and XP was granted for kills. This event had none of that.

• Champions dropped Champ bags in that event(which is actually a nerf to Magic Find, but this event is even a nerf to that!). <—-That last sentence is a perfect example of rewards going in the wrong direction.

• The Reward vendors in past events I have appreciated didn’t charge any gold for what I collected for them. When vendors collect gold on top of a currency it doesn’t feel like a reward. It feels like a vendor that is gating a purchase and a gold sink.

ArenaNet, you are double dipping on the gold sinks. I get a gold sink for selling stuff on the TP, I get a gold sink for converting gold to gems, I get a gold sink during an event I can’t even earn any gold from!!!!!!????

• If you think that’s fun for players to go around killing stuff for 30 minutes getting nothing the whole time they are doing so and then you head to a vendor that is supposed to be rewarding you and is instead an arbitrary gold sink, then I don’t know what to say. I shouldn’t even have to suggest this. It should just be a silent agreement between player and developer that this is not fun under any circumstances. Period. Full Stop.

These design decisions are disconcerting from a player’s standpoint because it makes you wonder if loot trending toward digression is a design goal. So is it? It makes me ask, “Why do we have magic find in the game?” Seriously, I’d rather we just got rid of it and the essences so I didn’t have to click on them anymore and then we could all stop pretending that it’s even a valuable mechanic in the game.

• Why did I waste my Celebration Booster on this event when it had zero effect on anything I did except in opening up an inventory slot for me that got filled with exactly nothing from this event.

• This event negated the use of Magic Find Boosters, Bonfires of any kind. Magic Find Food(including the Omnomberry Bar Trays that the “Best Community in Gaming” generously supplied people with prior to knowing that it would have zero effect and would be a waste. Hero Banners and other banners went totally wasted. At this point I can’t believe I am even typing this. How does this stuff even get overlooked. How can you treat the best MMO community this way? It’s pure negligence.

*I am ticked about this event because it’s an event that is so similar to ones you have done in the past and yet it misses every mark that those events nailed. Heck, you could have looked at feedback from those past events that people thought were good ideas and built on that. Instead you designed a shell of an event and are asking us for feedback

Gaile Gray.6029:

Konig Des Todes.2086:

But how about this question: Will Mordrem Blooms be used in the future, or should we use them all before the vendors disappear?

As explained here — https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Mordrem-Invasion-Update-11-September-12-30-PM/5487900 -- I do not know the answer to that yet, but have asked.

This seems to be an ongoing problem in communication in my opinion.
Everytime we get a new ‘currency’ type material for a limited duration event, we have no idea wether it’s going to be obtainable in the future or not.

Would it be a thought to get more clarity on this in general?

I think there are 3 key things to take away from this:

1. Events should encourage cooperation and group play rather than selfishness. The Silverwastes is a perfect example of events done well – everyone who participated is rewarded when a boss is defeated in the Breach, and everyone on the map either wins or fails together. Doling out Blooms on an events-tagged-per-person basis encourages selfish play. Always assume the community will find the most efficient method of collecting loot, even if that means screwing each other over.

2. Rewards need to be reasonably achievable within the timeframe of an event. If it is shortlived, loot should be higher. If it’s longlived, loot can be lower.

3. Content needs to take target audience into account. If this was designed to introduce new F2P players to the Mordrem and events, the rewards shouldn’t cost lots of gold that new players don’t have access to. If it’s designed for level 80 characters, it shouldn’t feature easy to kill mobs in a low level area. Pick your audience and design accordingly.

Anet has always been pretty good about experimenting with new types of content, but sometimes that means things go wrong and just don’t work as intended. Sadly this was one of those times. Thanks for keeping us in the loop, Gaile.

This seems to be an ongoing problem in communication in my opinion.
Everytime we get a new ‘currency’ type material for a limited duration event, we have no idea wether it’s going to be obtainable in the future or not.

Would it be a thought to get more clarity on this in general?

How about: if it’s a permanent currency, it gets added to the wallet. If it’s a temporary currency, it goes into your inventory bags. Then we’d know as soon as we obtained it.

ninja sloth.2658:

How about: if it’s a permanent currency, it gets added to the wallet. If it’s a temporary currency, it goes into your inventory bags. Then we’d know as soon as we obtained it.

I’d still prefer to see them in the wallet, but have the wallet categorised so it isn’t just one long list; e.g. dungeon currencies, temporary event currencies, culture-specific currencies, or something like that. That way, the list wouldn’t have to extend over a page and you could tell at a glance what you’re looking at.

It was only easy due to poor scaling. Scaled appropriately and the things wreck. Even the way they were I’ve seen entire groups get into downed.

So I understand that rewards will be given retroactively for people who were affected by the original rewards bug, but what about those that have been affected by the ongoing and un-addressed rewards bug? – specifically that if you get disconnected or crash in the middle of the event, log back in and complete it successfully with 5+ stacks, you get no rewards.

So as a make good can we have the halloween content early this year? please?

Rewards were fine, if a bit pricey for the amount of blooms you could reasonably get in a day plus what new player has enough gold for those waypoint costs? Other people have done the math regarding how many blooms you can get in a day from the daily reward + doing one full cycle per day with 20 stacks. I believe it was 420, meaning if you wanted one of the potions you’d have to do two more 20-stack zone invasions on top of the dailies. That’s all if you play as selfishly and greedily as possible by tagging an event and waypointing ASAP. I personally found that method of play to be difficult to maintain and quite enraging as getting anything less than 20 stacks means not only do you have to sacrifice even more time to this event, the time you’ve already spent was slightly wasted. Yes, slightly wasted because the design of this event is pull-out-all-the-stops and focus on your own rewards, don’t worry about anyone else, don’t res anyone because if you take one moment for anything other than MAX TAG AND PORT then you are giving up your rewards.

Anyways, about the design. There should have been less stacks to get and more incentive to stay in an area instead of waypointing around like crazy. Like you get a bonus bloom if you get silver or 2 blooms for gold.

The lack of a meta for the event. Should be that at 25 and 50 events completed a champion spawns and drops 5 blooms and a champ bag or something like that. Or maybe just one champ at 60. That alone would have made more people worry about completing events since all the tagging and porting rarely finished more than 40 events.

Don’t get me started about the no experience/karma/2bluesandagreen… THAT decision made this whole thing feel like purgatory. I’m serious when I say that if no other change would have been made than to allow experience/karma gain and basic loot drops then I wouldn’t feel nearly so negative.

EDIT I forgot to mention that the forced breaks were a bad call. If you really had to have a break it should have been more like 3 × 40/20 and a 60 minute break instead of 3 × 30/30 + 90. All that waiting killed it. Not enough time to do much other than sit on your thumb flipping stuff on the trading post, let alone trying to log off and do a chore or something. And the 90 minute break? For real? If I have a limited amount of time to play and I’m super jazzed to try out the first bit of actual content in months but I log on slightly too late because traffic/had to stay a bit later at work/REASONS and I miss the Brisban invasion, my minimum playtime is now increased 90 minutes and for someone who might not have the time, 90 minutes is just silly. I cannot fathom the reasoning behind having the break in the first place. Look, the Dry Top method is the best imo. 40/20 with no break at all and you’re good to go. In and out in around 3 hours no matter when you log on.

EDIT 2 I almost forgot about people that might only be able to play on a Tuesday or a Wednesday. I guess this event wasn’t for them? I guess you might have been planning on extending the event a day or 3…

EDIT 2.1 Also please stop with the “Hey guys, we’re EXTENDING THE EVENT! Aren’t you super excited now?!?!” Just say what the actual event start and end dates are. It’s an obvious psychological ploy, just like what you did with the commander tag colors. You never intended to go live charging for individual colors, you just wanted to rile everyone up to garner some attention and incentivize more ppl to get tags at the cheaper price.

EDIT 3 Another thing: If you are wanting to make more former gem store skins available through in-game content and this is the general form said content might take, please keep the skins on the gem store since paying real money for them is a better use of my time.

TL/DR Read it.

I like the break because after it over, i can get up, use the rest room, what ever, i am not rushed right to start again, which is one reason i might miss first 10 minutes of Dry top, sometimes.

I MIGHT forgive ANet if they decide to be NICE and give everyone a free item of choice from the merchant. Its not costly for them, everyone gets something, and we shut up. No big deal, i think.

I’ve been playing Gw2 since day 1. My gf is now playing, little by little, since the game became F2P. I will not get HoT – and I seriously doubt she will – if the business model is this: prepare a complete disaster of an event, then do nothing about it.

How am I supposed to encourage my friends to play THIS, when the event I was so hyped about turned to be an utter grind? How can I cheer for my gf to participate in the event in Diessa knowing she can’t buy the gold expensive rewards even if she farms the tokens? You are making this harder.

On the other side, if ANet shows their heart, and ask for forgiveness by giving out a token or appreciation for players, at least i’ll be able to say: hey, dude, look, they failed BUT they are courageous enough to deal with it.

About the event: rewards should scale with the map, not individual participation. As it has always been in Gw2 major events. If you want to cater an event to low level F2P players, 10 g is a hefty amount. Rewards should not be given just in a specific moment, to avoid DC’d players from losing all rewards: check Silverwastes → a chain of map-combined efforts that keep leading to rewards.

So since one of my comments has been removed, for not providing “constructive feedback”, I’ll clarify some things. It’s not only the event players are up roaring about, it’s the combination of lack of forethought and lack of accounting for player feedback. The sales didn’t go as hoped, and neither did the mordrem event. I still love this game but, it’s hard to downplay these issues.

I think the ways to remedy this could have been to implement bonus blooms in small amounts based on completion level (bronze,silver,gold) for example 5 for bronze, 10 for silver, and 15 for gold, along with the timed map portion. This would give players a small amount more than current, provide an incentive to play nice, and ensure time restricted folks are able to get their share of rewards. The problem here is, this game is 3 years old, and you guys have done fantastic events in the past. What has changed in the offices, to make you go against what you know works already, and how players will react to it? For arguments sake however, these aren’t things players should need to tell you.

As far as the sale, I know many people got things the needed, things they didn’t have before. The other side of that coin though, are the veteran players who already had these items, or didn’t need them. Those are the players in the 60 page gem store suggestion thread. Those players hoped that after that thread became popular, and actively monitored, maybe they would finally be obliged, and able to purchase a few items they’ve been longing for; such as, the bunny ears, grenth hood, sunglasses, character slots, and other fun items. Instead we got the run around, and even a hype inducing extension, and it all ended in a flop for many players.

I don’t want to take away from the people who got what they needed though, perhaps having more than 1-2 good sale items per day would help, you could do more of the full priced rare items, and still have the regular sales items that new players need. It’s only a short time so really it shouldn’t be game breaking, and things settle back to normal quickly anyhow. I really think it would have been worth it, in a retention sort of way had the sale targeted both player audiences a bit more evenly.

I for one am hoping somehow a fix comes soon, that will allow players a chance at the items they want so bad, now that the sales have allowed the new players to get the items they needed. Whether that be another event, or another sale, so be it. This way we can all get back to what matters, having fun in GW2.

I keep getting constant disconnects this week, along with work I won’t have time to finish any more of these events… Not that I could most of the time due to random D/Cs but I will suggest my piece of constructive feedback on how to counter the following:

• Disconnecting means you lose all your stacks resulting in zero reward

Possible solution:

• The stacking buff should stay active (up to most recent stack achieved) even when you disconnect so long as the event is active and you are in the same zone regardless of instance(s) e.g; Brisban Wildlands

Problem(s) with my suggestion:

• What happens to players who achieve a certain level of stacking buffs but reconnect AFTER the event has finished?
• Could the stacking buff stay active after the event for briefly 10 minutes for those who reconnect to unlock their bloom rewards?

That’s about all I could think of. Hope that helps.

As long as we’re crowd sourcing game development (for free)…

1) Each event that a player tags/does the minimum should reward 1 bloom only.
2) Each event location should reward blooms on a sliding scale, up to 5 blooms for each location if done start-to-finish. Players should be incentivized to complete events rather than ride to rewards on the backs of those who do.
3) The end boss/vine at each location should drop a chest with a bloom + champ bag as a reward for those remaining, but only if they contributed past a threshold level.
4) Any player reaching a reasonable threshold of participation (20 minutes or 5 events) should receive a bloom bonus and a reward chest appropriate to character level (equivalent to the chest a world boss drops).

New/lowbie players especially must feel frustrated and abused by this event, as they basically get nothing of value to them. Anything that rewards players for selfishness, that encourages players to ‘not waste time helping or rezzing others’, is counter to the game’s philosophy, and frankly deeply offensive to those of us who came here seeking relief from all the selfish griefers and mindless grinding in other MMOs. Please do better next time!

These would be fun if they stuck around until the next expansion pack, all during HoT season. But not as map wide 30 minute events. Just have a pack(3-6?) of localized ones pop up randomly a few times a week.

Bioectomy.9217:

Put. Loot. On. Mobs. This is not a thing that can be debated or discussed.

See, I disagree with this. Not just with the it can’t be debated or discussed part. I think putting loot on mobs is a bad step in the wrong direction, only enforcing the competitive tagging zerg fest that I feel should be steered away from in future events.

Event rewards should be more evenly distributed across the different player roles, (ESPECIALLY if Anet want to promote combat roles in future content that isn’t just dps) and the people manning the catapults (for example) or doing a bomb run or whatever should get the same rewards as the people who kill things to protect the catapults or clear the beaches to allow the bombers through safely or what have you. For mobs that do drop loot/champ bags/whatever, their life span should be measured in minutes regardless of player zerg size rather than seconds, and they should have a separate stage in the event cycle all to themselves to allow everyone to pile in and contribute. If an event spawns 3-4 giant champions to deal with simultaneously, the person who deals damage to all 4 and the person who spends their whole time distracting/kiting one of the champs should be equally rewarded, because they were both contributing effectively.

Thank you Gaile, for your constant responses to this issue, and your efforts in getting answers to the most pressing questions about it. I hope that feedback from this thread will help in the future to create events more like what they used to be, and not how this one was.

I would like to offer my own feedback that I think is crucial to how GW2 has been structured in the past, and the types of players it seeks to cater to.

Events need to last two weeks or more. In the past, the Living Story has been available in periods of two weeks, allowing the majority of players to experience it some time within those two weeks. This is important because players have different schedules. The easiest way to please them all is to make the event available for a longer duration, so everyone can participate when they are able.

Daily rewards from events should be emphasized. Across the whole game, we see this already in place and working. Most rewards have daily limits that give a large portion of the reward up front, and the rewards drop off once the daily has been completed. There needs to be a balance between the player who can only play a couple hours or less every day, and the player with all day every day to play events. Between the two of those, the daily player should feel like their participation and effort is rewarded, and the all-day player should feel like they have somewhat greater rewards than the daily player – but, if a player can participate in the event for most dailies (75%-ish sounds reasonable) then they should be able to purchase a single one of the highest rewards offered, or a small number of lesser rewards. The all-day player might reach purchasing two of the largest, or several lesser.

Meta-achievements are a great alternative to currency rewards. If, for example, players instead had achievements to do during the Mordrem Invasion, and the meta-achievement rewarded a choice between a Selfless or Thoughtless potion, and a separate meta-achievement choice between either pair of shoulder+glove skins, then that would’ve solved the issues of newer players not having enough gold to buy the rewards even if they have enough blooms, as well as keep our inventories neater. Then, beyond this meta achievement, the rewards would still be purchaseable from the vendor, but the currency would be about as scarce as it was – if a player wants both potions, they need to do the achievements as well as participate heavily in the event for currency. Both systems can be used in tandem to encourage players with short-term (achievement-based) rewards, and long-term (currency-based) rewards. This might seem to contradict my last point, in that the daily player should be able to buy high-end rewards – but if the meta-achievement system is used, then of course the currency system should be rebalanced to make it more difficult for an average player to acquire both.

Events advertised toward new/low level players should reward experience, karma, and coin. Requiring waypoints is less of an issue; those are easy enough to get ahead of time with notice. But waypoints cost coin for all players, and participating in an event that utilizes waypointing should at least compensate players the difference. Experience and karma rewards can scale proportionately greater, the lower level the player is, but still be granted to all players, so that it’s not punishing to participate on a level 80. And the events themselves should scale appropriately to the number and level of players participating, with dynamic participation credit that requires more from high level players, and less from low level players.

I hope that, given the feedback this thread is producing, we see another similar event to this that utilizes the feedback granted in meaningful ways… and mostly I just want an opportunity for everyone to get at least one thing they wanted with the schedules they have.

Many others have commented at length about how there should be more incentive for sticking around and finishing events, and for the rewards to scale with how the map as a whole did, again to encourage finishing events. I had the following idea on how to achieve this.

1. However many mordrem invasions the map as a whole defeats (I’ll call this the “map tally” from now on) sets the “maximum” number of blooms players can receive (I’ll explain why that’s in quotes in a sec!) for each cycle.

2. Individual rewards are the map tally multiplied by a scaling factor. The scaling factor takes into account the number of events you’ve completed and how well you did at each one, like this:
a. For Gold level completion, you earn a scale factor of 0.2. For Silver, you earn 0.1. For Bronze, you earn 0.05. You obtain the “scale factor reward” from a chest that appears on the ground at the end of the event. If you’re not there to finish the event, you lose out.
b. The scale factors from separate events simply add together. So if you earned Gold on 5 events, your scale factor would be 1.0. Let’s say the map tally was 40 events; then you’d earn 40 Blooms. If you earned Gold on 2 events, and Silver on 2, then your scale factor would be (0.2 + 0.2 + 0.1 + 0.1) = 0.6, and your reward would be (0.6 * 40) = 24 blooms. It would be possible under this scheme to earn more blooms than the map tally, but the precise scale factors could be adjusted so that it didn’t get out of hand.

The advantage of this scheme is that it provides incentive for (1) individual players to make maximum contribution to a smaller number of events, rather than just tag ‘n’ run, and (2) players to cooperate across an entire map for the best possible outcome. It would also insure that no player who completed any events in the map would come away completely empty handed, which I’ve seen as some real frustration in map chat.

Just my $0.02.

Gaile Gray.6029:

we want constructive ideas that help us make future events that are fun, meaningful, rewarding, and involving.

Individual ideas will only go so far. And in many cases they may be reactive to the structure of this event but may not apply as well to differently structured events in the future.

What this event really needed – and what future events will always need – is involvement of people who really understand how events work in practice and how players play in practice. They need to analyze and try to predict how design decisions are going to play out, long before the design is set in stone. So these people need to be involved from the very start of building such an event.

And if these resources aren’t available in-house for whatever reason, then find a way to reach outside. If necessary do something like involve veteran members of the GW2 community in the event design, or whatever else it takes to ensure events are fun and work the way they’re intended.

Gaile Gray.6029:

We’re actively reading and participating in this thread to let players know we understand they have concerns about the event, to gather as much consensus about the concerns as possible, and to use that information to plan future events.

Alternatively you could produce a blog post/write up that creates some accountability on ArenaNet’s part by acknowledging what you’ve learned from this episode and our feedback and what mistakes you won’t be pushing to Live servers in the future because of that insight. That’s right, actually publically commit to doing better in the future.

My problem with this event isn’t the problems with the event but that the event itself is the product of flawed testing procedures that keep producing bad events. Its not the mistakes, its that we keep seeing the same mistakes played out over and over. Specifically the mistake that the designers expect players to do anything other than pursue the optimum path to rewards. You need to assign or hire someone on your in-house testing group to play devil’s advocate, to look at each new scenario and say “I’m not here to follow the script as you envision it, I’m here to see if I can break the script for better than intended rewards.” This kind of ‘hostile testing’ is essential to not letting these sorts of easily manipulated and abused scenarios make it out into the wild.

You’ve got an opportunity to turn a black eye into proof that ArenaNet can own up to its mistakes and become a better studio for it. Please do.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Lag or disconnects, for instance, have been tracked and reviewed by the network team, and no pattern has yet been found. Someone at one location may have perfect ping, and someone else in the house next door may have lag. The team is investigating each ticket but please note that forum posts don’t help, so please submit a ticket. The specific instances I’ve read about today in network team e-mails point to the customer’s ISP. (This is data from a traceroute, which is solid, impartial data.) Now, that’s not to say that every instance is a result of ISP issues, but again, the lag and the event do not seem connected and a ticket is the only way for us to figure it out, or help you figure it out.

Back to the broader topic: We’ll continue to read the constructive posts and to use your suggestions to the benefit of future event planning.

the bulk of the disconnects that happened were for about 7 hours through saturday night here in australia, and many others were effected by these too with the amount of posts that were made on the forums.

it would be greta to be compensated for those especially or for that time, saturday night being one night I was able to participate in the event..so ultimately being unable to log in at all, made being able to get any of the vendor items impossible, I think I can get those shoulders with a one time use on them, which what a waste of blooms for the effort put in,
as the event won’t be extended either, I seriously hope you might send out a chest in the mail to everyone allowing them to claim one of the vendor items.

As it is, this event served as a powerful piece of antimarketing. It makes me and others nervous about the potential quality of HoT. Has A-net downsized to the point where they can no longer design events properly? Does A-net realize that frustrated customers tend not to buy gems and/or expansions? Can A-net find a way to make lemonade out of this lemon?

Suggestion: find a way to fairly and retroactively compensate players for their time and frustration. A-net has had many great in-game events before, and players have been (largely) happy with them. This one just feels like it was done on a rushed time-table and a shoestring budget. The pre-purchase blowback was salved by the addition of a character slot to the packages. The hard feelings around this event could be similarly fixed by a reward of blooms/gear. It seems obvious to me…

Constructive content feedback:

• You guys have access to new AI tech. I’ve heard you guys talk about it. Why wasn’t it employed? Everyone getting a taste of the new AI could have been a huge deal in terms of pushing those sitting on the fence about whether or not to buy HoT(like me). Sadly, this event(for reasons that should be obvious)didn’t do anything to make me think the game was taking a step forward.

• The new events were happening on top of old events. The new events felt tacked on because those bandits acted like nothing was happening around them. Events endemic to zones should be removed temporarily or better yet, the NPCs from the permanent events should turn “green” and help the players. That would be a cool thing.

• You guys talk about iteration and yet this event feels like it’s the first time you’ve done one of these. Content should be hard to exploit. It took all of 5 minutes for vets to figure out how they were going to get the most reward out of this and the rewards were still meager.

• None of these Mordrem were anything we haven’t seen in the live game before. Why weren’t there new HoT Mordrem there if it was an invasion from deep within Mordremoth territory?

• There should have been a boss fight at the end of each of these events where we fought a different Mordremoth Lieutenant in each map. Each map boss would have had different mechanics.

• I know this won’t get answered here, but someone needs to take a good hard look at the design doc for this event. Did the goals get met for it?

As a side note I’d like to reiterate that a box that has a choice of one of the rewards from that vendor should be mailed to all players regardless of participation. I know I have expressed my opinion on this event multiple times this weekend but I can’t express enough how bummed I was that the first content in GW2 in 8+ months fell so woefully short of the quality I have come to expect from your truly talented team. You can do better on a consistent basis!

Another suggestion:

If you are going to take drops away then things like the Memories of Scarlet box should guarantee a non-insulting reward. In one opening I got some ascended material (dust and shards), aetherised metal which salvaged into platinum, blade shards and a gift from Scarlet. Given that this is effectively half my reward for the entire event it is insulting to think that I could have been almost as well rewarded for walking up to a platinum ore node.

The nourishment drop at a decent rate and I am fine with the fact that the valuable stuff is pretty rare (I can live without a realistic chance of getting the eyepatch), but please guarantee at least something that will make you glad you chose to do this rather than a champ train.

Probably a “meta” issue about all this is that there hasn’t been any/much content between now and god knows how long – and when something like this comes out, it just rattles the community and makes them “hot under to collar”.

Essentially, if you’re going to pull a stunt like that, do your very best that the content you release after a good while of not release is something that’s good.

I also sincerely hope that events in HoT are not like this.

As a “vet” or a player that played this game more in the past, and now just following along with it’s development and thinking on buying the expansion, this kind of bomb just makes me think less of coming back – and that’s besides all the other controversial things happening around the expansion (like for instance, how the HoT+core game bundle was handled).

Hello,

I just finished with the event. I got the items I wanted most, which are the toxic gloves and the toxic mantle. I had very limited time in my busy life to actually complete this.

I’m not going to suggest game design issues since that’s not my area of expertise. I’m just going to explain to you my experience with this event. A little warning, it’s not a good. I rarely post in these forums because I usually trust the minds behind the game, good or bad. But this…. this was really bad.

I started to do this event Friday night. I did the first event and got 25 blooms. I thought it wasn’t that bad… then I realized it was a daily chest of 20 and I only got 5 blooms for the extra. After, I move onto Diessa a half hour later. I’m doing the event and about 20 minutes later, the entire map disconnects because of the server…. I give a big sigh and continue to do events. After the event is finished, I get about 7 or 8 stacks and I get nothing. Not even a daily. I’m pretty upset about that and decide to go to bed because I’m just going to get more mad.

I started doing calculations of how many blooms I need to get what I want. I need 450 blooms. Between my sleep schedule, work, other life errands and the wait time in-between events.. is that even possible? It was actually, but I barely made it. Otherwise I would have had to lost sleep over this. I had to schedule my life around this event over the past 3 days. It’s pretty bad when Anet decides when I can sleep, shower and my grocery shopping. I’m not a hardcore or casual player. I’m more in the middle. If there is something I want, I’ll shoot for it, but at my leisure. If I really want it, I gun it.

This entire weekend was incredibly stressful. Making sure I done everything I need to do in real life. Making sure I got those 20 stacks in game. I had to put some real focus into those 30 minutes to really get those 20 stacks. It was devastating when I got 19 and the event was over. Happened to me twice. Almost a third, but I got it with 25 seconds to spare. But I was still so upset… I had to make sure I was still on track with my goal.

I felt incredibly selfish running around, tagging an event and leaving others behind. I saw down/dead people that needed rezzing but couldn’t because people had to hurry to the next event. When I went down, I tried to kill myself as a thief to position myself in AOE so I can waypoint faster to the next event. How is this a good thing? I remember Colin Johanson saying at the HoT announcement at Pax South, that when someone dies, a flock of people out of no where come and help rez. It’s true. When someone is down on my minimap, I drop what I’m doing to go help them. Not for this event. Not many people did for this event.

What upsets me most is that Guild Wars 2 has been around for 3 years. I love this game as much as you guys do. You have made some really great content and some bad content (which is fine, test and learn). Over those 3 years… You have made so much content and had so many learnings, user testing, research ect. You guys should know what works and what doesn’t! This event didn’t have to be grand or game changing. I can’t even begin to describe what was wrong. I’m sure 15 pages of this thread can tell you guys that. I can’t remember a single time when I was this stressed over an event that you guys made.

I’ve met you guys in person, taken photos, and great had discussions with devs and I defend and commemorate you guys on being such a great company who made a great game. But this really disappointed me and a lot of others. It was not fun.. at all.

My drawing professor could tell how much time I put into a single drawing just by looking at it. I draw 20 different hand poses on a single piece of paper. He was able to point out which one I spent the longest on to make it look really good. I thought I could get away with having kitten the rest. Well. I was wrong. This event seemed like no thought was put into this and was thrown together b.c it felt like something was needed.

Please, don’t let this happen again at this magnitude. Use what works. No need to reinvent the wheel 100 times.

Thanks from the player who won a free mouse at the anet party.

Iason Evan.3806:

snip

(Haven’t read all of it though)

So,on the one hand you want AI, on the other you want events to be removed from the map as it’s too hard?
The events have always been around and I have no idea whether or not it’s easy to remove them – but they never bothered me. More mobs to kill = more loot.

Also, this event was only 3-4 days in low level maps, have you been around during the marionette event? It took us quite a while to coordinate that – more than 4 days (there were no megaservers around back then which made it a bit harder).

In the end, I think the only thing that went wrong with this event was the waiting time between the events – and the rewards.

But one thing I forgot from season 1, which was the reason I always quit an event early, was the constant bickering.

Cormac.3871:

Another suggestion:

If you are going to take drops away then things like the Memories of Scarlet box should guarantee a non-insulting reward. In one opening I got some ascended material (dust and shards), aetherised metal which salvaged into platinum, blade shards and a gift from Scarlet. Given that this is effectively half my reward for the entire event it is insulting to think that I could have been almost as well rewarded for walking up to a platinum ore node.

Total agreement. The bladeshards are a bit boring, but welcome. The dust/ore/frags absolutely are not. There are so many ways to get these in game that I am trashing them even with the eaters and I am upset they are taking up a spot in my loot roll. I also get quite a few salvageable items that give me base metals. Those can go too. I don’t expect to get one of the good items, but I hope each time and the dust and ore just feels especially bad. I also have 4 key pieces that don’t make a full key, nor do I know how I can get key pieces in the future to make a full one and I really don’t feel like holding on to them just in case. I’d much rather get a bunch more shards than any of the mentioned items. Otherwise I’ve only gotten the portals and feather from the boxes and those were at least useful or fun. A one-off thoughtless/self-less potion would also have made a good prize.

Another thing, and this is probably a personal problem, but sometimes I get very bad culling issues. If I don’t notice that it’s a bomb event before the poison circle loads I can easily die because I am rushing to tag mobs to get credit. Mobs, btw, that I can’t actually see and have to blindly fire on hoping that I lock onto one and can see the red circle or nameplate. I know I can turn down effects, but it doesn’t happen all the time and I don’t want to have to keep switching my settings back and forth. I would like it if events could find a way to spread players out so we don’t have critical mass like this.

I think it would help those of us thinking about suggestions if we knew what the objectives for this event were from ANET’s perspective. Gaile, do you have anything you can share here? E.g.:

Was this a test of having lightweight events in the main game that link to HoT to extend the story beyond the new zones? If so, cool concept, please do more of this. I’d like to see the existing Tyria content impacted by HoT.

Is this something that is intended to drive F2P players to purchase HoT? If so, your data will tell you conversion rates from the event… but from playing the beta I can personally say that the event didn’t “sell” even a part of what I’ve already seen in HoT – which is a shame because HoT looks amazing so far.

Was it just something fun to hold us over till HoT? If so, maybe we should all just chill out and thank you for doing something we didn’t expect, even if it didn’t work out!

A few very important points to me.

-Rewards would be so much better, if people got awarded stacks based on participation. Bronze:1 Silver:2 Gold:3 This would make people stick around the event and finish it instead of insane event hopping, wich isn’t fun.

-There needs to be system in place to help with disconnects. Even when the disconnects aren’t on your end. If someone’s power falls out while farming an event, that’s nothing you can help, but the buff should stay on that character so that when he logs back in, if the event is still going, he can continue, and if the event is over, he gets his rewards.

-These events need to follow eachother closer, not having such a huge gap. The event time is also just a bit to long imo. A better system would be 20/25 mins events 5/10 mins break.

-The events themselves need to reward experience, especially in such a low lvl area. Right now i have to advice news players to just ignore them. Wich is such a shame…
I wouldn’t have a problem if it only rewarded xp to sub lvl 80’s, that way more people would play their alts and event mobs wouldn’t die in 1 second.

-Scaling of the normal mobs is to low. I know the normal mobs aren’t supposed to be hard, but if there is a zerg there, they need to at least be up for 2 seconds.

-When you are giving rewards from the living world season 1 and old gemstore things, there need to be more items to choose from. In a way this event punishes loyal players for already having everything on that list. The only thing worth buying for me is the scarlet box since that can drop a rare dye. That’s a bit sad.

-Mordremoth is pretty stupid. By wich i mean his invasions don’t mean a thing, since he’s not invading outposts and settlements around the map. Imo a dragon would strike with more clear targets. Yet the npc’s around the map don’t even know something is going on. Have events spawn next to villages, have the npc’s fight the event and die, needing to be rezzed. Make it have some impact into the world.
A mordrem event spawning in the middle of Meatoberfest for example, that would seem like the dragon is actually impacting the world.

One thing that might have mitigated some of the negative reaction would have been to include new mobs from HoT, as opposed to mobs from SW anyone could fight for better rewards. This might have generated a lot of interest and goodwill, especially from those on the fence about prepurchasing HoT.

“Never change a winning team!”

-Keep the reward structure it had in Scarlet Invasion.

-Learn from the past & evolve from there.

-Don’t disregard 3 years old well established experience and main guidelines.

Neesh.9012:

-Keep the reward structure it had in Scarlet Invasion.

I disagree – the rewards here are not really thought through, yes, BUT we’ve had a major fight (the whole server) during the scarlet invasions because the commanders (were few back in the day) rather wanted to farm the neverending flood of aetherblade champs than to complete the event. So those who wanted to complete it stood no chance.

The last halloween event was awesome actually, 2013 not so much as there was no loot – I don’t have to get valuable stuff everywhere, but something that makes it worthy to do an event. I don’t know if the halloween event was different because the map had a lower cap than open world, so it’s unlikely that additional champs spawn, or whatever was different.

I’m not sure making mobs drop loot is the answer, especially if champs are spawned. I think Silverwaste or Toxic event type rewards work well. Either get rewards per event at the end (SW) or have a reward spawn at the end of the event that you have to be there to pick up. SW I think is better since if you die and no one will/can rez you, you still get your reward. Nothing is perfect, obviously, but these two events work pretty well. SW also has the whole map objective, so that’s another thing it has going for it.

My favorite limited time event is the Labyrinth. We don’t get great loot, but it’s possible and we get lots of it. I can farm it at my own pace and jump in and out whenever I like as time allows. Please, please don’t nerf it.

I’ve gotta complain again about the DCs. Not just in this event, which just cost me 12 stacks, the daily, and 20 minutes of my playtime, but in ALL of the game. Getting DCd at a 90% Silverwastes usually puts you back into a 20% SW when you relog. Farm that one to 80% and get DCd again 20 minutes later? Log back into a 0% SW. Without keeping a player locked to a shard for a period of time after a DC, all future events that work on a timer will continue to be garbage for people without perfect connections.

Some way to temporarily preserve what instance you’re in and what boons you have at the time for brief periods of no connection would really, really help nearly all areas of this game.

The DC costing me everything did illustrate that key flaw in the event everyone has been repeating: Because not one single portion of the event provides any kind of reward aside from the end of the meta event, all 20 minutes of my work fighting the mordrem was basically deleted because I lagged for about 20 seconds, got kicked to character select, and had to log back in.

I’ll repeat that: Because of the changing fall weather and high winds in my area causing a brief (<30 seconds) disconnect on my end, 20 minutes of working on this event got taken from me because GW2 doesn’t sustain that information between connections. My character was possibly still standing in the same spot they DCd, with 12 stacks on them, near an event, to everyone who passed by, the disconnection was so short. And when I relogged I was put into another shard and lost all of my stacks.

That’s a really, really terrible feeling as a play. I have absolutely nothing to show for logging in on the last night of the event so far.

Constructive feedback:

1. Tell us what you learned so we have confidence that your next event is worth our time

2. Stop abandoning projects when they don’t go as planned. You won’t learn that way

DougTheSlug.3920:

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

Bad Idea – Trying to gold sink on the rewards while promoting this event as your first Free2Play event.
Suggestion: No gold sink, especially so close to a whole pile of new accounts (f2p announcement) without the ability to gain some of this gold during these events

The Ugly – Existing Reward Frameworks completely ignored
- This is an ongoing issue with anet, so I’ll refrain from making this too rant-y. You keep setting up frameworks to build on later to make your game easier and better to expand, and then ignore or shut them down at a future point instead of working with them.
- Will the Birthday boosters that were in use prior to this event be replaced, for the countless hours of play I’ve done in this weekend’s event where they’ve had zero effect/impact?
Suggestion: Stop ignoring existing frameworks. This time around, you’ve ignored Champ Bags, event rewards (karma, XP, gold), creature kill rewards (XP, loot/MagicFind, gold) and achievements. I’m at a loss for words here,
Suggestion: Please fix the underlying issues of event scaling to prevent side-effects of champ bag farming goals going against actual event completion goals. Maybe your scaling needs to pump out less champs and more elites.

The Ugly – Stacks of events completed equal better rewards
- This concept of tag & skip is being abused. You should be rewarding doing the events, not who can get out of combat the fastest to WP to the next one. This has been another ongoing problem: motivating your players to actually complete the events as desired.
Suggestion: Counter selfish behaviour – Gold event reward = 5 stacks, Silver = 3 stacks, Bronze = 1 stack. Get 35 stacks for 10 blooms?

I liked the complete post from DougTheSlug but I want to highlight these three points. And yes I know, I quoted only some bad and ugly. And no good. As Doug said there were some good things in this event. My suggestion is that you look at the results of this event and all the comments. Keep making these kind of events. Stop trying to invent the wheel every event. Use your existing frameworks. Stop making a new currency every event. If you really have to introduce a new currency tell us if it is a one-time only currency or that it will stay and you can get more in time.

Menadena.7482:

Thanks for not extending the event and getting back to us. At this point the only way to save it at all is to let it die.

This. No point in extending it, it has too many flaws.
However, if I may be constructive, I’d suggest a retroactive increase in rewards and a removal of the 10g price on items + refund for those who had to spend them.

Please try to save what can be saved. Show the new users that you’re in good faith.

I felt that the event was just a little too much of a grind (for me). Like if I wanted to get both the toxic shoulder and glove skins? I’d have to be a “no-lifer” all weekend long to get them. I remember watching the GW2 manifesto years back, there was this part where you guys mentioned that you didn’t want players to grind in GW2.

IMHO, this event contradicts that, as well as many activities we have in the game like champ trains etc.

Back to the Mordrem event, I think it would have felt a little more rewarding if the mobs dropped a few blooms so just in case a player disconnects, he/she would still have SOMETHING out of the event. 1-3 blooms per vet or champ should be decent, so people who have busy lives outside the game could get to 225 or 450 blooms just a bit faster. Some exp, karma and coins would’ve helped too, all that porting here and there to get to 10 stacks and suddenly disconnecting isn’t fun at all.

I didn’t mind if it was a “copy-paste” of the scarlet invasion event we had before. Just thought it would’ve been more friendly to players with busy lives outside the game but wanted to get 1 or 2 skins or the halo / horns thing.

Don’t use a “buff” to track rewards, since dc is a big issue and it doesn’t use the well established and honored 3-tier medal ranking, with its given incentive to stick to the end and participate in your best manner for the highest reward, at all!

Is there already an ETA known when we will get the blooms from friday?

Gaile Gray.6029:

[…]
I think you guys get it, and I understand that some of you are pretty “hot under the collar” about the event. But please try to give us ideas we can work with — that’s to everyone’s benefit.

Dear Gaile,
you are right with what you say here. But did anyone at Arena.Net take a moment to think about why replies are the way they are? Why so many people just share their rant (and I don’t exclude myself here, I ranted aswell) instead of giving constructive comments?
GW2 just celebrated it’s 3rd birthday. We had several events already, some longer and repeating (like Wintersday), some shorter and one-time-only (like southsun). We had two seasons of living story.
All the above had its ups and downs, things people liked, things people disliked (sometimes just because of personal taste, sometimes for valid reasons). And every time tons of people gave Arena.Net feedback. A lot of feedback. A lot of constructive feedback.
And now you roll out this mordrem invasion, giving the impression you never read any feedback people have given to you or you simply ignored it. Giving people the feeling they talked to a wall of bricks over the past three years.
I’m well aware that you guys are pretty busy right now with HoT’s release being close. Over the past weeks there were many developer’s responses like “We are aware of that issue, but too busy to look at it closer right now since HoT has top priority”. And still you decided to shot this “event” from the hip, giving the impression the responsible designer lost every single bit of common sense.
Put all this together and you should understand why people are like /facepalm and ranting.
I always considered you, Gaile, as one of the smartest persons at Arena.Net. May be you can transport this message to your devs and change something to the better. Or at least try to.

Sincerly yours
Nash

To end with something construcitve:
1. Don’t do such events when you don’t have the ressources for it
2. I totally understand why mobs don’t give loot and I’m fine with it; I remember those “scale up – grab loot – move on – don’t care about the event itself” zerg events at LS1 quite well; but let them give exp and karma, so at least new players (and you said that this was one intention of the whole event- bring old AND new players together) can benefit; may be let them drop some extra blossoms now and then
3. finishing events has to be more rewarding then tagging&porting. period.
4. at least make the mobs somewhat dangerous. When reading the anouncment of the event I was like “hurray, the probably hardest open world mobs of gw2 are coming to town”. and then we get some super harmless versions of them, that even blow themselves up
5. reward scaling; already mentioned many times before, not much to say here but: don’t force players to play 24/7 for an entire weekend to get at least some of the rewards

Kidel.2057:

Menadena.7482:

Thanks for not extending the event and getting back to us. At this point the only way to save it at all is to let it die.

This. No point in extending it, it has too many flaws.
However, if I may be constructive, I’d suggest a retroactive increase in rewards and a removal of the 10g price on items + refund for those who had to spend them.

Please try to save what can be saved. Show the new users that you’re in good faith.

I agree, after all that time consumed just to get to 225 and 450 blooms. 10g kinda hurts.

To think that there WILL come a time when a new glove skin will be out and you just gotta have ’em. Bye bye 10g and the XXXX amount of hours spent to get them Toxic , Scarlet skins during the Mordrem Invasion.

I haven’t really read other suggestions due to lack of time, sorry for repeats and sorry in advance for the rather long post.

When designing an event, you have to start at the back. The first questions should be “What is the goal of this event?”.

Your answer in this case basically was: “The event is supposed to be a way to welcome new (F2P) players to the game, to bring them into contact with veterans. Guilds will be recruiting and at the same time be able to lead their new members into the game. We want to show new players how amazing our community is.” I will be referring to this as “premise”.

This means, that the event was mostly aimed at new players.

With that premise, the next questions based on your past experience with events should have been (kind of in that order):

1. What can we do to make it enjoyable for the event’s target audience, in this case: new players?
2. Which rewards would be useful for new players?
3. How can we make these rewards rather easily attainable for people who are not yet really familiar with the game and its combat system?
4. How can we ensure that the event is casual enough to actually give veterans time to recruit, chat with newbies, show them the ropes? (see premise!)
5. (Down the list of priorities – see premise!): Which rewards can we additionally offer Veterans to give them an incentive to participate as well, without taking away from the event’s goal (—> without turning it into a mindless farm fest).

Suggestions regarding these points:

1.:

You have to consider who the target audience actually is.
Newbies are people unfamiliar with the game. For a map wide event you have to consider one simple thing: They don’t have waypoints unlocked. They also don’t know how tagging works, they are slower and worse equipped.

What could have worked?
For example starting at the zone entrance, you gather with a team of priory explorers. Gathering time 2 miuntes for everyone to arrive. You have to escort the team to a camp, which is then attacked by mordrem. Trash mobs are good to suggest numbers, but what’s important is champs and elites to make sure, newbies with blues and greens 20 lvls below them are able to get credit. Have them drop champ bags.
This was event one: gives one stack of the buff.
After that, escort the team further to discover maybe a cluster of 3 vine crawlers -> big fight ensues, but again, it’s one big event. Gives another stack of the buff.
And so on. Lead the players through the zone event by event. Again, they’re newbies and don’t have waypoints. Use your new Yak-escort mechanic to ensure credit for the escort parts. Have downtimes of 1-2 minutes after every event to make it casual and enable people to actually chat, recruit, answer questions (see premise!).
All of this ensures everyone can get full credit and the same rewards. No tagging, no selfishness, because events take long enough, can’t be started early and you’re forced to participate. No alternatives to just going along with the flow of the event chain.

After 5 or 10 or whatever number of these events, reward chest pops up, 1 currency per stack, bonus chest. Which brings us to

2.:

A newbie event needs newbie rewards. Yes, it’s nice to bring back some old stuff for veterans, whatever. Yes, it’s nice to use it to rebalance a part of the economy (in this case enameled dyes).
But there was NOTHING useful for new players, except maaaybe possible money from scarlets memory box in the form of enameled dyes which F2P players can’t sell on the TP.

Good rewards would have been account bound best in slot items for certain levels. Level 30 rares, level 40 and 50 exotics. And uh, maybe don’t have them cost additional 50s, because for a new player that’s really a lot of money. Especially if they’re unable to sell on the TP.

And (really important, has been said millions of times): experience, karma and drops. Champs need to drop champ bags, trash mobs need to drop loot or better yet: coin. Why coin instead of drops? Because F2P accounts (see premise, your target audience!) have less bag slots. It’s extremely frustrating to have to leave the event to vendor trash. Or have them drop a single stacking trash loot item. But give rewards for killing stuff.

3.: See above. Make it a clear event chain with a moderate pace.

4.: See above.

5.: See above.

See? By starting with a premise and constantly checking your ideas against that premise, you are able to craft a good event. Have an awesome idea that doesn’t fit the event’s premise? Scrap it! (and keep it in your notebook for a time where it maybe fits).

Good authors have to be able to scrap whole chapters they put a lot of work in and which they may love, because they don’t fit the narrative. Event designers need to be able to do the same.

And please please please look at the scaling issues. Veterans participate with buffed out Level 80 chars. Mobs need to be able to take a beating. If melee classes in the middle of the train aren’t able to properly tag anything, scaling needs to be improved. Spawn Champs that are true HP bags but don’t hit too hard. Weak AoE attacks, some CC, so that it feels like a fight, but doesn’t instadown everyone who’s not yet really accustomed to dodging.

To get back to the small downtimes between events mentioned above: This way you can draw out the event to 30-45 minutes and have the next one start maybe 10-15 minutes later.

Cheers.

Some suggestions for similar events in the future:

Add incentive to complete an event rather than just tag it, e.g. With a 1 minute temporary gather spot accessible only to players that got event credit, and have it yield one bloom in the place where the crawler was, just like what already exists for the Toxic events. For the catapult event, since the crawler is not physically accessible, it could be animated to fall down the cliff to leave a gather spot in place of the box of repair hammers.

This option seems to me a better incentive than the buff we saw here, because that buff was awarded to players outside of an event radius. Much like the events in Silverwastes, it’s more lucrative to run around and tag as much as possible, which is counter intuitive to me as far as player interaction and fun goes. With rewards given whether you are present or not, you have no incentive to rez downed players, especially since these events can’t fail. Selfish behavior, in my experience, by players breeds more selfish players, and more animosity and elitism.

Back during the Scarlet invasions, I think the reception was better because players got instant gratification in terms of loot, and were encouraged to work together to actually complete the event they were at, lest it fail. In this way personal effort correlated with map effort to complete enough events to trigger the holographic Scarlet fight. While those events’ capacity to be scaled up strongly destabilized the market, it was specifically the fact that scaling was rewarding that caused the problem – lack of mob loot is already preventing market collapse, so probably keep that as is. However, correlating player effort with map effort would have made this eventevent much better.

The Silverwastes regional separation and absence of waypoints makes it reasonable for characters without mobility to stay at one fort and complete the rotation of events there without doing a loop of the map. Similar effects could be accomplished here by disabling most of the waypoints on the map, clumping events into distinct groups, and positioning each grouping approximately equidistant from its closest open waypoint. The hope here is that players would split fairly evenly between the groupings, and would stay there for the duration. This would also make parties useful.

Speaking of parties – the waypoining caused for parties to often be broken up as one player went to one event, while another went to some other – in my guild, players spoke about how partying up and joining players in the same instance offered no benefit. Guilds often group up on a megashard for a variety of events – teqatl, triple trouble, silverwastes, dry top, guild missions, and while a bit of a hassle, they are rewarded for being together and coordinating better. In this event however, coordination was not rewarded at all, as the map events completed count seemed to have no effect on player’s rewards. I would like to see more incentive to coordinate, which might be as easy as adding time limits to these events. “Need more at Amber, Osa about to die and needs rez” types of call outs happen pretty often in SW, and players invariably respond by showing up because failing an event is detrimental to the map, while succeeding improves rewards (by helping reach breach faster).

The biggest issue though was a lack of karma or experience awarded for participation, and a lack of experience for killing mobs. Given that experience at level 80 no longer matters, and tomes are readily available, it would not have been unreasonable to offer this event as an easy way to get ~5 levels per map. This would be destabilizing if masteries were available, but since they aren’t yet, it doesn’t give anyone an unreasonable advantage. Caveat: if mobs continue to drop no loot, it could actually be harmful by overleveling low players above their gear level without offering any drops. Some amount of instant gratification for killing stuff is pretty important.

Edit: I know I listed SW in both positive and negative examples here – this was intentional. The fact that defense events yield better rewards than other events means that tagging reach fort is still better than camping one fort. Since these crawler events were ate comparable though, I think the tagging strategy could have been avoided entirely.

Here is my feedback to the Devs

Problems with the event itself and suggested remedies:

1 – The steps in the reward scale are too wide

With rewards of 5, 10 or 15 blooms spaced the way they currently are, it encourages players to just “tag” events and run off to try at all costs to get to 20 events in the timeframe, but it also de-incetivise players to keep contributing if they get the sense that they will not reach 20 stacks of the buff. So many are stopping after reaching 10+ stacks and AFK waiting for the event to finish on the map.

Suggestion #1: make bloom rewards be awarded in a more continuous manner: each event to which you contribute should reward you something. Maybe one bloom per event. It does not change massively the total amount of blooms awarded, but makes it meaningful to keep doing events throughout the timeframe.

2 – Disconnecting is much too punishing

By awarding the blooms at the end of the event based on stacks of the buff it means DCing (currently) wipes your rewards and not every player enjoys top notch connectivity. Plus Anet servers are not always the most stables, so DCs do exist (particularly on maps where large amounts of players gather for such events).

Suggestion #2: award rewards immediately after the completion of a single event. Mixing this with the previous suggestion: make every event reward one Bloom immediately after it completes. That way, if you DC you have accumulated what you worked toward and do not lose that.

Suggestion #3: To track map contribution still award the buff (just one stack) and anyone who has it when the event ends gets the map daily bonus reward. That way, if I DC after doing 15 events I have my 15 blooms from those already and doing quickly one event after DC gives me back the buff and allows me to get the daily map bonus.

3 – Reward structure is too individual

In its current form it is a free for all, everyone for themselves, tag war.

Suggestion: To foster a sense of working together towards a common goal, on top of individual reward for the single events contributed to, a map wide reward could be added based on the number of total events completed on the map. The more coordination and joint success there was, the better the reward. I.e. if a map completed at least X single events, then all those with at least one stack of the buff at the end get an extra chest at the end.

Problems with the rewards and suggested remedies:

A – The offered rewards were of very little interest for “veterans”

It was a great catch up opportunity for players like me who had missed out on some of those items, so I was happy to get a chance to get my Armored Scarlet Mini. But for lots of my guildies, there was nothing on offer that they did not have.

Suggestion #4: make rewards a mixture of new and old stuff. So both players who missed out and veteran completionists have something to work towards.

B – Lack of clarity about the timeframe and currency

With no clear communication about how long the vendors would be around, whether the currency would be used in the future or not, and whether there’d be more opportunities to get the rewards in the future, it makes deciding which rewards to choose very hard.

Suggestion #5: please state clearly from the onset whether a currency is one-off or not. And whether we should use it all now, or what would happen in the future.

illtill.5014:

This was event one: gives one stack of the buff.

Or just forget about the stack and make players pick up loot like normal, forcing them to be there when the event end.

I mean why are we even talking about a boon stack as a deciding factor to reward? Boons are boons! Boons dont give rewards!!!

Killing a mob or in the GW2 eqvivalent case, completing an event, make loot drop on the floor. The core of PvE since the beginning of times. Silverwastes is already walking a fine line with its award chests pre final event. Its needlesly making something abstract when it should be immersive and part of the world we are in.

I am a casual player, and sorry if I made some wrong interpretations.

I do not spend much time on seasonal story-themed events; so, I spare them in this post. But I love open-world events which do not force you to focus kitten the whole event to achieve something (skin, tonic, mini, etc.). Halloween 2014, Wintersday, and then a Chinese-themed new year event. These were the last three events I remember before the devs fully concentrated on HoT and gave up everything else. I can only wish this event was as charming as the former open-world events, but it was a huge disappointment after months of no-event period.

I do not believe Anet staff will ever care all these posts but I want both to criticize this so-called event and will bring my own suggestions one by one.

Criticize: Event duration was unacceptable. Four days, total six lap per day, each lap includes three 30-minutes invasions with a 30-minutes break after each invasion, and an another one-hour break per lap. As being a casual player, I can only interpret this to keep the player online for more hours. But hey, I chose this game to play just because it is casual-friendly, not because it is a grind-fest mmo.

Suggestion: A 15+ days event, not based on invasion-laps. Better yet, these maps can be invaded all the time during the invade and the events can be like toxic-alliance invasions or the “closing the doors” type invasions which we see during Halloween. From time to time a huge boss can spawn which can be killed via a smooth cooperation only. This kind of event can rejuvenate LFG-taxi tool as well.

Criticize: Acquiring the currencies is a pain for both hardcore gamers and the casuals. I am not against new currencies as long as they stack right into the wallet (such as the bandit crests were stacking by 250 before the big patch, it was very annoying and time-consuming). However, the currencies should be easy to acquire. If a merchant pops-up and selling stuff for new currencies, the first thing to take into consideration must be the ways and means of acquiring that currency.

Suggestion: All the monsters in those invaded areas can randomly drop currencies during the event time. Considering these bad-guys are also plants, the plant nodes can give blooms by chance when the player gathers them. The mobs during the active invasion can drop bloom-containing bags. A PvP reward track can be added for the ones who do not like PvE much but have desires for those skins.

Criticize: What is that stacking buff for God’s sake? It does not fit with the GW2 mentality. What I have seen in this game is these kind of buffs are always beneficial for the players. But this buff makes people stressed.

Suggestion: Buff stacks mentality is wrong. But if you want to implement no matter what, it can either be implemented like Silverwastes MF buff, or like Dry Top map-covering buff which can increase the drop rate of blooms and lower the prices of merchants.

Criticize: Event mobs do not give loot, exp, coin, karma, bloom.

Suggestion: It cannot be hard to add a loot table for the mobs. Yes, the events might be some grind-fests and the map will be outnumbered by guardians with their ‘lootsticks’ but everyone loves loot. Plus, if the event lasts for a reasonable number of days, sooner or later everyone will benefit. And this might be a good way to cohere veterans with F2P players too.

Criticize: I do not believe Anet developers play this game regularly with regular accounts. I do not believe they know the game mechanics of the game even they design the game mechanics. I do not believe devs know the GW2 community; their expectations, desires, wishes, etc. I have felt this for a long time but these last 15 days we passed have almost proven it. Even a casual player can see this with the anniversary sale and this failure event.

Suggestion: N/A.

I’ll start with the bad since im still mad about it lol.
i got dc’d with 10 stacks and made me ragequit pretty hard. its an insane hindrance especially to others who cant spare time.
which leads to my next point. as the event stands when it comes time i need to spend to claim these cool rewards. i cant justify my time spent to do this event. i would rather level up my character or grind gear and gold than do this event.

Upside is, coordinating with a a whole heap of players on this event felt really fun. i have nothing against the gameplay itself when it comes to the event. its quite awesome to do so. would love so see more of this implemented on other maps on the future.