Guild Wars 2

I’ll start off by saying I don’t mind the new dailies. The new reward structure is actually kind of nifty. The lack of choice is off-putting, but the latest “oops, that’s an unintended problem” comes from the rather specifically-directed play the dailies encourage.

I’m not even against the directed play itself. (Forcing Silverwastes on me when I only have one character who can get there was butt, and so was Fractal 11-20, but.. eh. I got over it.) The problem comes from everyone doing the same objectives. Everyone.

It became an issue in Iron Marches last night, when 30-50 people started doing events that were not designed to hold that many people. Spawn rates were stupid-low and mobs evaporated the moment they were conceived in pixels. It felt just the same as being in the pre-event for Frozen Maw or Fire Elemental.

Conclusion: The interaction of directed play and zergs is not fun.

I’ve been rallying for smaller map populations for a while now, since many of the world bosses are on farm. Scaling on Teq and Triple might have to be adjusted a bit, but it’s the easiest solution.

Otherwise, it’s time to make a sweeping balance pass on all events so they scale properly for 2-200 people.

I agree with you on this, but I had a very different experience in iron marches. I got on and found a decent sized zerg (20-30ish), and we did the 2 mordrem bosses, fire shaman, and the first mordrem again. Not going to say it was difficult by any means, but both mordrem bosses were downing and killing people, and fire shaman didnt seem to kill anyone but it took more effort from having to do all three phases. Whereas, the escort or kill X mobs events have the problems you describe no matter the # of people.

Better event scaling (and rewards) would be a huge improvement in this game. If only the people who designed silverwastes could go back in time and do all the other zones from the start (that zone gets zergy after a while too, but its a LOT better than the rest).

While it’d be nice to have many concurrent quest threads in all the other zones, they’re tied to renown heart progress and such. Not to say they couldn’t be redesigned, but it’s an added difficulty into making them more cohesive with the zone, as it is with Silverwastes.

As I think about it more, it might be easier to simply give different dailies per player. Keep the task and reward the same (logger, events), but let the locations be different.

So, Player.1234 gets:
Ascalon Miner
Lornar’s Pass Events
Kill Jungle Wurm
(While I have my argument with the kill-a-world-boss daily, if it differed based on time of log-in so that it happened within the hour, or changed to Defeat a World Boss, that would be fine.)

while Player.1111 gets:
Shiverpeaks Miner
Kessex Hills Events
Kill Jungle Wurm

That would spread out the zerg quite a bit by shuffling them into dozens of zones instead of a single zone.

Rauderi.8706:

As I think about it more, it might be easier to simply give different dailies per player. Keep the task and reward the same (logger, events), but let the locations be different.

Just this. There must be hundreds and hundreds of possible dailies with the new system, why not just divide them into groups (so that you don’t get 3 gathering dailies, for example) and randomise it.

that’s one bright side on the revamp.. arena net isn’t forcing anyone to do certain content, but they can organize and incentivize doing so.. they’ll know where players are likely to be on some days, less traveled content will have a congregation of players testing things out, there’ll be better and more consistent feedback and or bug reports.. or scaling, event revamp suggestions.. also, the ’don’t give Everyone the same thing on the same day’ was briefly mentioned in the daily suggestion thread i promoted for like 2 months straight z_z but they were probably polishing their revamp by the time that feedback hit the forum z__z the new roll-out seems to be one they’d be able to tweak pretty easily..

as for scaling that is an issue all itself.. like the condition troubles, it’s an issue i myself don’t closely follow but i know other people have mentioned it quite a bit.. so if arena net is capable of improving those systems hopefully they’ll get around to it

obviously they aren’t stupid, they’re not going to bottleneck and crash content or make things horribly imbalanced.. i remember when they tweaked scarlet’s healthpool during ‘invasions’ .. personally, between wintersday and ‘new dailies’ i haven’t seen too many issues.. i’m sure there are some though

I have a feeling that if ArenaNet could have cracked the code on scaling content to the number of players participating, they would have implemented it a long time ago.

-Matt

cheshirefox.7026:

that’s one bright side on the revamp.. arena net isn’t forcing anyone to do certain content, but they can organize and incentivize doing so.. they’ll know where players are likely to be on some days, less traveled content will have a congregation of players testing things out, there’ll be better and more consistent feedback and or bug reports.. or scaling, event revamp suggestions.. also, the ’don’t give Everyone the same thing on the same day’ was briefly mentioned in the daily suggestion thread i promoted for like 2 months straight z_z but they were probably polishing their revamp by the time that feedback hit the forum z__z the new roll-out seems to be one they’d be able to tweak pretty easily..

as for scaling that is an issue all itself.. like the condition troubles, it’s an issue i myself don’t closely follow but i know other people have mentioned it quite a bit.. so if arena net is capable of improving those systems hopefully they’ll get around to it

obviously they aren’t stupid, they’re not going to bottleneck and crash content or make things horribly imbalanced.. i remember when they tweaked scarlet’s healthpool during ‘invasions’ .. personally, between wintersday and ‘new dailies’ i haven’t seen too many issues.. i’m sure there are some though

Glad I wasn’t the only one to notice.

This is a design choice that would help the game, but it’s not a specific complaint that’s going to generate 1000 views and 10 pages of text in 24 hours. But I can at least hope a dev or community manager will see it and hand it forward for a feature pack or something.

Took me an hour to find & complete 4 events in Iron Marches yesterday, due to the large amount of players clearing events. Like you I’m fine with the changes, even if some can become a source of frustration.

I did the Ascalonian miner, the Queensdale vista, and was going to do the Iron Marches events, but I didn’t want to run around for forever to find them, so I did the WvW guard killer instead. I don’t know about any zergs but while in Iron Marches for the miner, I didn’t really see a whole lot of people running around. I suppose it largely depends on when you log in, and what megaserver shard you get put on.

Rauderi.8706:

I’ll start off by saying I don’t mind the new dailies.

{snip}

The problem comes from everyone doing the same objectives. Everyone.

It became an issue in Iron Marches last night, when 30-50 people started doing events that were not designed to hold that many people. Spawn rates were stupid-low and mobs evaporated the moment they were conceived in pixels. It felt just the same as being in the pre-event for Frozen Maw or Fire Elemental.

Conclusion: The interaction of directed play and zergs is not fun.

I’ve been rallying for smaller map populations for a while now, since many of the world bosses are on farm. Scaling on Teq and Triple might have to be adjusted a bit, but it’s the easiest solution.

Otherwise, it’s time to make a sweeping balance pass on all events so they scale properly for 2-200 people.

I too encountered the odd issue in Iron Marches in that the villains were getting offed so fast it was throwing off the timing of an escort event. The NPC would just sit waiting as it was expected that the time taken to kill off the enemy units would be much longer than it was because of the number of players involved. The event did complete but it seemed that it took longer than normal due to the weird pausing as the event tried to figure things out.

Anet needs to vary these daily tasks per player instead of making them the same for everyone.

Peace.

Rauderi.8706:

While it’d be nice to have many concurrent quest threads in all the other zones, they’re tied to renown heart progress and such. Not to say they couldn’t be redesigned, but it’s an added difficulty into making them more cohesive with the zone, as it is with Silverwastes.

As I think about it more, it might be easier to simply give different dailies per player. Keep the task and reward the same (logger, events), but let the locations be different.

So, Player.1234 gets:
Ascalon Miner
Lornar’s Pass Events
Kill Jungle Wurm
(While I have my argument with the kill-a-world-boss daily, if it differed based on time of log-in so that it happened within the hour, or changed to Defeat a World Boss, that would be fine.)

while Player.1111 gets:
Shiverpeaks Miner
Kessex Hills Events
Kill Jungle Wurm

That would spread out the zerg quite a bit by shuffling them into dozens of zones instead of a single zone.

I got lucky on the Iron Marches events and was able to start from Monger’s Sink and proceed with a group through the area and got the events. The day before it was really hard finding anything in Queensdale because of the number of folk clearing events.

I do like the idea of randomizing dailies between players if that is even possible. I don’t really have a problem with kill a world boss since they cycle fairly regularly but casual or limited time players might have a problem with catching a specified boss during the time they are on.

It would be neat to have a mini scavenger hunt for a daily, find and read some books (and learn some lore/history), or locate and converse with one or more individuals (one person directs you to the next sort of thing). I have enjoyed finding interesting conversations throughout the world and one memorable one was following a golem in Metrica what was delivering messages to folk – some of the conversations/messages were hilarious especially if you followed long enough. I think folk would enjoy a bit more variety than events here, jumping puzzle there, slay that there.

Aerinndis.2730:

It would be neat to have a mini scavenger hunt for a daily, find and read some books (and learn some lore/history), or locate and converse with one or more individuals (one person directs you to the next sort of thing). I have enjoyed finding interesting conversations throughout the world and one memorable one was following a golem in Metrica what was delivering messages to folk – some of the conversations/messages were hilarious especially if you followed long enough. I think folk would enjoy a bit more variety than events here, jumping puzzle there, slay that there.

“Rawr, I’m a Charr, and I’m going to eat you!”
Heh.

That would be an interesting twist on a daily task. I’m not sure where it’d fit in the grand scheme of things, but done right, it could open up some of the lore to the players.

Was terrible on Iron Marches yesterday. There was just a very small chance you could finish the events with so many people around.

I only took the time to do those kind of dailies during the first day, which was in Queensdale.

And it was interesting. It didn’t take me long because I knew the map and especially the events that didn’t trigger by themselves. At first I thought it was by now common knowledge, but luckily for me all those events were available for me when I searched for them.

When you know a map, it doesn’t take too long to find an event. When you don’t know a map it’s kind of annoying, especially for big maps like Iron Marches. Your first idea is to head to areas where Meta Events happen, unfortunately everyone else has that idea.

So if you don’t know a map, it can be an extremely annoying and time consuming experience. But if you do know, it shouldn’t take you that long because you know where triggered events happen and you have some sort of idea of where you can wait for a fast respawn event.

Plus the wiki has a nice list of events with sometimes neat information such as their respawn time. But yes, it’s more annoying than before.