Guild Wars 2

Lately this has been discussed more and more in the higher levels maps and forums and it needs a dev responce.

Here is where not having enough damage gets you no loot.

In orr or medium / large events. If you do not do enough damage you dont get any loot from the standard mobs or even the boss’s because there are too many player hitting it, or your not damage spec or you do something else besides damage in these events. This forces everyone to be glass cannon spec and pushed players into one single role or risk not getting any loot rewards.

It also seems to be the case of no damage in large / medium groups in WvW = No badges of honour. I tested this and noticed you could get 500 kills in big fights with almost no badges of honour. Soon as they switched to solo fights or small group fighting where I did alot of the damage…..suddenly badges of honour drop.

In orr we did a group event where you get attacked by waves of npc’s, 30+ I would guess, not a single drop from any of them, not one, not even from the boss’s. As soon as the event finished I killed a npc solo, instant rare drop.

Arena Net of your reward / loot system is based upon who does the most damage, who does alot of damage or tbh has anything to do with damage at all, then it is seriously flawed and needs to be re considered and looked at asap plz.

It pushed all players into glass cannons or one linear path of character builds to get rewards from drops, it also means players will be less likely to want to join group events knowing they will get hardly any rewards for it. It also alienates support characters or any player that wishes to try a different spec or help the group in some other way besides damage.

So Arena Net why is it like this? If its for anti botting then why are players that do not bot being punished aswell?

I think the whole system needs to be looked at again but it does not seem to be working as intended and is punishing the players not the exploiters or botters.

Today I used flaming greatsword and aimed the number 3 in the right direction at the right moment then proceeded to spam 1. I got so much loot from that and I thought, “Geez! This is probably what the big sword guys get every wave!” Since the elite skill is on a short CD it’s try to predict where the mobs will be next, use meteor shower or lava ground, and hope for the best -_- Oh, and guardians who use that obnoxious spread them out skill are especially bad, hard to tap many mobs when they’re blown out of your AoE circle so I have to quickly switch over to air for the bouncing lightning to even stand a chance.

Some unspoken etiquette of these events should be:

1. Only let mesmers pick up a flaming greatsword (the caster gets one automatically so two people can have them if one person casts it)

2. No using skills that blow out of AoEs and try fighting in the player fire.
It’s really sad and I even did a post here on it the other day.

You don’t have to be a glass cannon, not by any means. It seems to be number of hits, not the amount of damage. So go ahead and put some vitality in your gear, it’s good for you.

The thing not to do is waste your time as, say, a staff guardian who can do no damage, unless you put a spirit weapon out first. Boons and heals and condition-removing will win you friends, just not loot.

Are you really so loot-focused you’d rather…
(oh nevermind)

@Agemnon:

What skill are you referring to that is used by Guardians? I know of the shield #5 and the utility bubbles, but the only other kb in the Guardian’s arsenal is a single-target in the hammer. Now, there is the GS attack that pulls mobs to the Guardian, but that is limited to 5 targets total. I have been annoyed by people hurling large amounts of enemies away, but it seems to me it’s the other classes, not the Guardian.

hammer 5 is a barrier thing
staff has a line of warding(?) that stop mobs…

The barrier type skills can either be used to gather or separate, depending how they’re used.

Go ahead and blame guardians for controlling mobs the way you don’t want them to. Don’t see you in the middle gathering them up (and takin the hits). :p

Aye, but neither ward will knockback, they just knockdown. And the Ring of Warding isn’t very large…something around 250-300 radius, I think. Guardians mostly keep mobs contained or nearby, not blast them apart everywhere. Very curious to know what skills keep launching entire mobs away from the group, though.

Yes this definitely needs some attention, its unfair to Support Players especially, right now there is only 1 role, 1 class, 1 purpose, 1 path: Ranged DPS

ImariKurumi.5761:

Yes this definitely needs some attention, its unfair to Support Players especially, right now there is only 1 role, 1 class, 1 purpose, 1 path: Ranged DPS

This is kinda what im trying to point attention to, well part of it anyway ^^.

Guys your way off topic here and not understanding the original post. This is not a professions discussion or a discussion on how to tag mobs, that is not the issue.

The issue is and please read all the original post, how damage dictates whether you get on the loot table or not in medium and large dynamic events and WvW pvp. Were not discussing builds, professions, or solo pve.

Please stay on topic and read the OP before replying.

Are you sure it’s not an elementalist using updraft ? Certainly sounds like it from the description.

In the Orr events you should get badges from the top of Penitent path. The bottom however is a little more tricky because it seems melee can tag them before range (if useing AoE) for some reason. You will get an invulnerable message if you lay your AoE too far away from the camp yet melee can tag them. If you lay it a little closer to camp they are usually pretty much dead by the time your AoE has an effect. Not sure why this is.

I will try to do some more testing and report back.

I must confess that the issue is much larger than no loot imho. It’s that Guild Wars 2 penalizes support play. Every character has to dps, tank and support on their own. Instead of having 3 people play the trinity, we have a single person playing the trinity. The whole idea of trinity, instead of being removed, was moved inside your character. You can’t play what you like – you have to play everything with your single character and it always matters when you get to hard content (which there is very little of).

If you focus too much in either direction you are penalized (not in DEs if you go pure damage mind you, but in overall PvE and dungeons). If you get too much offense and low defense – oneshot. If you get too little offense – no loot in both PvE and PvP.
Overall, you can’t give your team more with any kind of support than you can by just bringing more dps to the table. Again: you are forced into “trinitizing” (is that even a word?) your character. You can’t play what you want – you play everything.

Support is generally not useful at all in neither PvP nor PvE. The best thing to do is to reach an equilibrium of support/defense/offense that allows to both dps, survive and add a bit to the group to overpower the other group in teamfights (in case of PvE, that’s not even needed, but can be useful in dungeons to increase overall power). That means: neither focus on support nor pure survivability or pure defense is viable in any sense of the word in any game type or mode.

For me, a deditacted support player in all types of games, it means that I have to be like everyone else: support—bruiser—dps all at once (not to say healer-tank-dps). All I can pick is how much of each I want to do – and if I go just a little too far with what I want to do – bam – no loot, no badges, little contribution.

What in turn this means is that GW2 has replaced a trinity among characters with trinity inside the character – one has to be his own tank, support and dps and paddle his own canoe. And that is not good.
I can’t fight the notion that this model of gameplay actually kills teamplay instead of encouraging it. Yeah you won’t die if the healer drops the ball. You won’t die if the tank loses aggro. But if you’re not dependent on anyone with anything, who benefits? You? The Team? Noone. People as just as much dependent on team performance as they were in the days of holy trinity, but they can’t impact their ally performance too much without imparing the team with their own too-focused build.

Reasonable people incorporate some support in just about any build they make because some abilities are fine on their own and helping the group is just an added bonus. But it’s not the focus and it can’t be the focus. Even organised tPvP teams don’t sport a fully support-focused role because it is just not efficient to do so.
What in turn this means is that whole is rarely greater than the sum of it’s parts in GW2. Everyone does a bit of support so everyone’s ok with it, but if you like to support, you can’t do it without impairing yourself and being penalized.

What it means that you can’t play what you want – you must play a mix of dps/surv with a bit of support if you want it (usually you do, there are many strong skills that have the added bonus of group support). If you don’t do that – you are penalized.

Seems kinda off with the motto of “play what you want and how you want”.

This is super annoying in orr even as a gs gaurd I have trouble getting kill rewards on packs

That same event, same experience for me – made even better by it being perma-camped for the last week by 6 warrior bots. The event is completely ruined – I often can’t even get in enough damage to get past bronze, even though I’m a level 80 glass canon-spec’d ranger.

the system really needs some adjustment, I find myself using skills I usually don´t like much exclusively to loottag in zerg events (flamethrower in my case, which lets me AOE-tag continously), I bet it is the same for many players. When people have to switch to skills that are neither effective nor fun for them just to have a chance for loot, it seems wrong.

Even while damaging I don’t get loot in large fights sometimes.

Maybe not a guardian, but I saw one swing a sword and abunch of mobs being blown back. Maybe it was someone behind him.

Algreg.3629:

the system really needs some adjustment, I find myself using skills I usually don´t like much exclusively to loottag in zerg events (flamethrower in my case, which lets me AOE-tag continously), I bet it is the same for many players. When people have to switch to skills that are neither effective nor fun for them just to have a chance for loot, it seems wrong.

Yes! Exactly! Other people and I have been saying this right along. I remember being in the Bloodtide Coast event with the frog guy gathering eggs and dedicating myself to heals and slowdowns (because the ice field slowdown is useful for these mobs who love to run around and scatter), and only got bronze for it (and only got a medal at all by using icicle of armor reduction) -_-

Agemnon.4608:

Algreg.3629:

the system really needs some adjustment, I find myself using skills I usually don´t like much exclusively to loottag in zerg events (flamethrower in my case, which lets me AOE-tag continously), I bet it is the same for many players. When people have to switch to skills that are neither effective nor fun for them just to have a chance for loot, it seems wrong.

Yes! Exactly! Other people and I have been saying this right along. I remember being in the Bloodtide Coast event with the frog guy gathering eggs and dedicating myself to heals and slowdowns (because the ice field slowdown is useful for these mobs who love to run around and scatter), and only got bronze for it (and only got a medal at all by using icicle of armor reduction) -_-

That is my gripe too. Why not reward support play? Heck, I wouldn’t mind it being equal to dps (like getting assists on mobs etc.). But any degree of supporting is penalized so hard it’s saddening. The only thing that matters is dps – as much of it as possible – best if it’s AoE at the same time.
If you don’t have swiftness + aoe ranged attacks forget about getting too much out of events.

maybe a solution could be give everyone in a reasonable distance of the kill – a “danger zone” if you will – a chance for loot but use a timer for inactivity, maybe if you have not moved in the last 30 seconds, you are excluded (to prevent afk leeching).

PS: that is not an ideal approach, but I think it is very hard to measure all kinds of contribution to a fight numerically. DPS is a solid measurement, maybe healing by HP healed, but a lot of support methods/buffing just cannot be measured in a “hard” way.

When playing my guardian, if I focus entirely on keeping up buffs and rolling healing while trying to keep mobs hitting me (Mace + Focus) I struggle to get gold and will get jack for loot. I simply don’t tag enough and don’t do enough damage.

If I swap to two-handed sword, I can guarantee myself gold and plenty of drops due to damage and tagging.

This is frustrating to say the least.

So, you should not have to do anything at all to receive rewards and loot? Just run up and be there and win? What’s the solution? Why even bother with gearing up if this is the case? No offense, but 75% of the people complaining are running around in +MF gear to begin with because they want more loot. They can’t dps with MF, of course, so the game should be easier, right?

The first day I went to zerg in Straits, I didn’t get any credit for the first 5 events. So I upgraded my gear to rares. It was cheap, and then I adjusted my style for the large group, and never looked back, all Gold since. It’s just not that hard. If it is, you’re not doing something right, and there’s nothing Anet can do except basically just fill your bank with gold and give you karma and armor.

Edit: suggestions moved here

I really loath the fact that when you take time to ress a few players, you’ll be penalized for it. How does that even make sense? Aren’t you supposed to help players during large events? I mean, in some of these fights huge numbers are being thrown around, so players will go down a lot, then why doesn’t participation count when you help these guys up or if you buff them?

Playing support during big events means being at a huge disadvantage.

Loxias.2375:

So, you should not have to do anything at all to receive rewards and loot? Just run up and be there and win? What’s the solution? Why even bother with gearing up if this is the case? No offense, but 75% of the people complaining are running around in +MF gear to begin with because they want more loot. They can’t dps with MF, of course, so the game should be easier, right?

The first day I went to zerg in Straits, I didn’t get any credit for the first 5 events. So I upgraded my gear to rares. It was cheap, and then I adjusted my style for the large group, and never looked back, all Gold since. It’s just not that hard. If it is, you’re not doing something right, and there’s nothing Anet can do except basically just fill your bank with gold and give you karma and armor.

Rezzing a player in a long DE is the single BIGGEST contribution you can make to group damage output. You get zero reward for this.

This isn’t about standing around and doing nothing.

Yeah aside from loot being based on contribution in DEs and Wv3 that can be taken from a chest or some single point on the ground instead of running around “F-ing” stuff, contribution needs a serious update. Right now support spells, healing, reviving, peeling, aiding in kiting does nothing for you and discourages you from helping within first 1-2 bronze/silvers. And when I employ faceroll from 1-5 with a ranged weapon yahoo, I got gold… If I would like dps that’d be neutral, but I dislike dpsing. I like helping via support spells, boons, heals, control maybe, not by dpsing.

It sounds like some adjustments need to be made and hopefully anet will look into it.

I know at least one game where the way the game doles out rewards were adjusted over time to allow people healing and doing other support stuff for players to count as participation. Now you don’t even have to hit the mob and still get participation points and rewards.

Not a coder but it sounds like it’s just a matter of counting support ‘hits’ (heal, boons etc) on the damaging players to whatever code that determines the % that people are participating.

I think it would be awesome if we got a dev response on this matter.

I, for one, would be really glad to know if the current state of things is a result of much higher-than-anticipated number of people participating in DEs and oversight in Wv3 or if this is intended by ArenaNet to force people to mix their playstyle and never go full-support.

If we knew if it is a “bug” to be fixed or an intended design we could make much more informed decisions.

Thankyou guys for the reply’s, is pretty obvious its not just me then.

Damage should have nothing to do with whether you get loot or not and those that do more damage should not get more chance of getting loot than others.

It’s a stupid system that punishes players and forces everyone into glass cannon specs which im guessing is not what the dev’s intended.

It seems what has happend is they have implemented something that whas suppose to stop botters and put in some anti farm mechanics but because they based those levels of design upon damage and how much damage you do….the system is flawed and instead of stopping farmers and botters, it is actually a system that punishes the normal player and forces them into a play style they may not wish to play.

Arena Net it would be nice to see some sort of responce to this and to get some more information.

Right now this can’t be an intended game design? Not enough damage = No loot.

Lets also be clear, these are players that are giving 100% to these events there not botters or farmers or gold sellers, there normal players giving 100% effort to these events and getting nothing due to a terrible in game system.

TRON.1085:

Right now this can’t be an intended game design? Not enough damage = No loot.

That’s the other problem, fighting in large battles, especially with melee and focused spec means you’re going to have very few drops. Meanwhile players who aoe span tags targets all over the place, and they get insane amounts of loot. This is a prevailing issue in Orr.

Not sure how they’ll handle this, since it’s a much different issue from support participation in DEs.

@Azjenco:
I’ve already proposed a solution above. I think loot based on contribution DE-style would be better. Instead of running around to loot every single mob/player you would just get a chest or “gathered loot” groundspawn that you would open and get loot that is directly tied to your contribution, not the ammount of mobs / players tagged. This would solve many more issues (as stated above), not only the “penalty for support” or “AoE tagging for the win”.

This is why I won’t even bother with the Claw of Jormung (or whatever he is called). Last time I ran it, the game didn’t register enough damage and I got completely shafted out of loot and experience. It was irritating because I did do damage and I was reviving other players. I died a few times as well, so I had repair costs and teleport costs. To not get anything left me bitter.

Since then, I don’t see any point in participating in such events if it’s not guaranteed I’ll get anything for my time and effort.

make another 80 that focus on dps for your farming or just like everyone said man up and do some dps.

Take up space, throw heals and support spells…and get loot like everyone else?

Man..talk about deja’ vu. For a second there I though I was playing a Mystic in an EQ2 raid.

Ideally, loot drops and event contribution should count the following:
-damage
-boons distributed
-conditions distributed (even if mob is capped)
-attacks blocked+evaded
-attacks interrupted
-healing done
That’s what I can think of off the top of my head, there may be more. I think that would make it so people could enjoy playing something other than just dps in group settings.

tl;dr ;p

Not enough damage? get in groups and you’ll get the most out of it.

Tip for mesmers, use izerker followed by shatter

Can we get a dev responce plz?

They already have responded, just not in this thread. They said that participation for large events isn’t working as intended. It was a while ago, so I dunno if I’d be able to find it. Skim through the dev tracker, maybe you can find it for us.

I don’t recall if it mentioned support or control yielding participation towards a DE, but I can’t imagine they wouldn’t want that.

We do have a response here, but nothing about support.
It’s the only one I’ve found via search tool and dev tracker – I didn’t look through all of it obviously, but that’s the only one about the broad subject of DEs.

@DusK: is this the one? If it is, it doesn’t mention support or control. And we don’t know if they want that or not. It can be a designed system to prevent people from focusing on support or control and forcing them to make balanced dps/surv builds with a bit of support if they wish so. It can also be that they want as many builds and roles as possible to be viable. If so, it doesn’t work that way.

That’s why I agree with TRON – we could use some dev response. Either assumption may be valid – but we don’t know if we’re complaining about design or an oversight. In the first case – it would be pointless (because it works how devs think it should), in the second – we could discuss how to fix it asap.
And this is only remotly tied to the issue of counting participation and contribution as a whole that we already have a statement on.

Any chance of a dev responce on if damage is the key factor at the moment in large events whether you get loot or not….

Try it as a Mesmer. They actually need time to build up clones and phantasm and the instant their target dies so do all their clones and phantasms.

Also they need targets to cast many of their spells. So far I only know of one AOE spell that does not require a target and it is short duraction and 30 second cool down.

I don’t know if its all damage based but I do definitely get more loot as crit instead of condi and if the group is big enough I can’t get any no matter what, even with big/many hits as a thief. It is very frustrating especially since they are creating mega-servers with the intent of more players playing events. Should really be looked at, especially loot for support roles, buffers/healers are what make Tyria go round. Old topic still relevant…

Punny.9210:

make another 80 that focus on dps for your farming or just like everyone said man up and do some dps.

Exactly.

Stop playing the game like you want to and start playing it like anet wants you to.

Lol karka farming comes to mind… yeah it’s pretty frustrating going through several of those without drops. I don’t really know a solution other than just roll your sleeves up and do as much damage as you can.

FYI it’s now against the rules to necro a thread..

look at the date

Vol.7601:

look at the date

and yet its still an issue, especially with new players (like myself) who expect a little more than:

Boss fight (assume open-world type event)
-My AEgis/protection/healing saved other berserker/glass person (Pat) from dying two seconds into the fight and constantly throughout … yet Pat gets much better drops for standing in one spot and facerolling keyboard.

-I ignore Pat and the group, let Pat die (time rezzing is time not having my cat dance on the 1-5 keys), focus on myself and putting out as much damage/hits as possible … i gets the lewts!

seems rather contradictory to the incentives of playing a multiplayer game when its beneficial to not help other players at all.

ALTHOUGH drawing the line between support/healing and lazy chump hiding in the back occasionally pressing buttons is probably much more of an endeavor than it would first appear.

In my opinion it also has to do with how fast you deal damage. The slower you are, the less/ inferior your loot will be.
That’s why I don’t like to take my mesmer main if I want decent loot. It’s incredibly slow and takes nearly ages to set up to make some dps (mainly at that point in time the foes are already killed), especially when playing with phantasms.

I think it’s to discourage zerging, depending on the design.

Since zerging is pretty much the best gameplay method, where your survivability is better than in smaller group and you’re hardly requested to even have skillbar with group support.

However, zerging requires almost no tactics, which is why content is being designed to be harder for mindless zergs, as that doesn’t encourage players to play other builds, than full dps (since you have to get some damage done to fill the contribution, full dps is mostly desired in large zergs, playing any other build with more support or CC will have less damage, just to make the support and CC more potent)

With small groups however, one can fill up their contribution even with low damage builds, in this the damage based contribution pretty much is to prevent players from playing “dedicated roles”.

Spiderbite.8049:

rant

Party up, you know, it’s a MMO. Thank me later.