Guild Wars 2

This is all taken from my Blog but I thought I would also post it here for all to see and reply to.

Blog Link: http://7bitworld.org/2012/11/21/the-problem-with-one-time-eventsand-why-they-need-to-continue/

Post part 1:
So if you play Guild Wars 2 you may have noticed this nice One Time Event that happened over the weekend. And if you’re on the internet at all you probably noticed the total kittentorm everyone made over it. Honestly though; all that aside, it was one of the best things that could have happened to Guild Wars 2 and I hope ArenaNet take that to heart.

I know some people are never going to like One Time Events in any game because they are bound to miss out on some of them. But for me that is what makes it so great. People were excited when ArenaNet said there were going to be things you could do in GW2 that would change the game, actually make a difference, and this is how they make that happen. You will not always be there, but when you are you really are a part of this game’s history.

I’m no apologist though, I’m not going to say more of these events should happen just because I want to make the game look good or act like it’s perfect. I’m not going to act like it didn’t have it’s share of problems. But I’m also not going to act like they weren’t good for the game either, because they were.

Now let me explain. One of the most used words when people describe GW2, and more importantly “why it sucks”(it doesn’t), is Zerg. Zerg Zerg Zerg. Everyone seems to hate the zerg and even GW2 apologists point it out as one of the only flaws to the game. Yet 99% of the players still seem to be stuck in that zerg mentality.

This event proved it more than anything else. ArenaNet gave us a set of events that were filled with kind of anti zerg mechanics, things that made you pay attention. But no one did. Everyone zerged and when they all kept falling over dead and couldn’t complete this stuff for “hours” they claimed it had to bugged or just impossible to do.

Of course no one worried about killing the adds that spawned, nope we gotta zerg this boss. No one thought to interrupt those one shot kill moves that were telegraphed and easy to spot, nope we gotta zerg, dps, gogogogogogogogo. OMG we let the adds, veterans, and chanmpions over run us and get to the boss, he used an ability and now has full health again. BUG!

I know there were some lag issues, and we’ll get to that in a minute, but putting them aside, and including the people who had no lag at all, this is exactly how it went down for most. ZERG!

What happened to actually paying attention and reacting to whats going on in front of you? What happened to learning these events and mechanics on the fly and adapting? What happened to playing this adventure like and actual adventure instead of assuming zerg is the only option because we haven’t had weeks to learn the ins and outs of this event?

Honestly, there were a lot of cool mechanics and abilities included in this event and many of the players still don’t know about them after the fact. People thought more Karka were spawning after they broke their shells. The ability was right there, plain as day for all to see, but few took the time to see it and adapt and understand. There were quite a few other abilities and mechanics like that included in this event, things almost no one took the time to notice and adapt to, they just assumed it was tuned to hard or bugged, it could never be they weren’t doing what they should be doing. Zerg beats everything right?

Unfortunately it does. Given enough bodies and enough times and zerg can and will pop anything, mechanics alone cannot stop it. And this is the reason I call for more and more events such as these, and more such mechanics added into the everyday game. Sure that zerg can finish it, but it’s going to take them so long maybe just maybe people will start paying attention to the mechanics and try it the right way. There are already mechanics like this in the game to a smaller degree, but they’re mostly in dungeons and people just die->res->zerg those too.

I’d like ArenaNet to add more and more such mechanics into the game, not just in one time events or dungeons, but even out in the regular world. And take away some of the things that make the zerg easier. Set these events a long distance from waypoints. Remove some waypoints from dungeons or block areas off once you use a waypoint until everyone dies or the boss does. Condition the player to become used to these mechanics and stop the zerg.

Post part 2:
The more you slowly add these mechanics in and slowly make them the rule, instead of the exception, the less prevalent the zerg will be.

Another cool idea would be adding in ways to tell the players about these abilities and mechanics before or during and event. Have a cut scene of two soldiers talking and have them mention breaking the shells. Have a NPC Sergeant shout in the middle of a fight about a Champion or Boss’ abilities. Put little things like this in the game that subtly point these things out to the player, so they still have to learn on the fly, they still have to adapt, but it’s also a little bit more obvious for them to see.

That all said; this event also had it’s fair share of problems. Bugs and lag were definitely a factor this weekend, even if I think the zerg mentality is to blame for the most of it. So how can we look at that going forward?

I’d love to see the possibility of opening more overflows just for these one time events, and lowering the caps in each. More is going to be happening than normal, so if you spread the player base out more it will hopefully reduce the lag.More Overflows overall, and less people on each one, just for these events.

It would also be cool if these one time events could occur in more than one area at a time, giving the player a choice, participate in the Karka invasion here, or help save them from the karka here, both are only happening right now so you have to choose. I realize some events just will not fit this way, the story will prohibit it, but where it can fit it would help to spread out the populace and reduce the lag. While at the same time making it all the more emergent for the player. I’ll tell you my story of how we saved The Grove if you tell me the story of defending Lion’s Arch.

Obviously testing would also go a long way towards helping out with bugs, and I can only assume ArenaNet is working on getting a test server up and running and/or getting some in house testers to play with this stuff more before it goes live. I’d personally like them to keep it all in house myself, just hire more or keep it in testing longer, so it’s all still fresh and new for the player, something we still have to learn and adapt to while it happens. Not look up the strategy that was written on it after it spent 4 weeks on a public test server.

So in closing I think this event was great for this game, it showed us a lot of potential and hopefully it helped us players, and ArenaNet learn a few things so we can both do better next time. I am of the opinion that adding more and more content like this is only going to improve the game and the players within it. I hope ArenaNet doesn’t shy away due to this weekends reactions, because doing so will only hurt the game. Take it and learn from it, players and devs both, but never run from it.

Please ArenaNet; give us more, this weekend was amazing and I know with time newer events can and will be even better! Don’t be discouraged; you’re not only making content, you are shaping stories and players, and I love you for it.

I actually like the one time events idea as well, the portion I did not enjoy was the rewards that some players were able to gain. I do not know the extent of how many people received precursor items in this event but I do know a few people personally that got multiple, by running on different characters. This creates a huge imbalance between the players that were able to participate and receive these rewards and the players who through other obligations were not able to participate. Personally for myself while I enjoyed the idea of the event, the execution of it was very lacking, I was never able to actually complete the event chain due to a late start, full overflows, disconnects, game crashes and when I finally did get close they ended the event. Having said all this I would like to see more of these types of events if they can figure out a better execution of it, but if they do I certainly hope they consider the disparity they can cause with the rewards for such events.

“One time events” can be drastically improved by making them occur several times over a short time period rather than literally just once in the game’s lifetime. This wouldn’t harm the overall concept of one time events, but it would allow a lot more people to participate in them.

I do like the one time events but i really think they should last longer, one weekend is not enough. Not talking about doing it multiple times but just let it take like 2 weeks

TimeBomb.3427:

“One time events” can be drastically improved by making them occur several times over a short time period rather than literally just once in the game’s lifetime. This wouldn’t harm the overall concept of one time events, but it would allow a lot more people to participate in them.

it’s not a one time event if it happens more than once.

ShadowPuppet.3746:

I actually like the one time events idea as well, the portion I did not enjoy was the rewards that some players were able to gain. I do not know the extent of how many people received precursor items in this event but I do know a few people personally that got multiple, by running on different characters. This creates a huge imbalance between the players that were able to participate and receive these rewards and the players who through other obligations were not able to participate. Personally for myself while I enjoyed the idea of the event, the execution of it was very lacking, I was never able to actually complete the event chain due to a late start, full overflows, disconnects, game crashes and when I finally did get close they ended the event. Having said all this I would like to see more of these types of events if they can figure out a better execution of it, but if they do I certainly hope they consider the disparity they can cause with the rewards for such events.

I don’t know, I didn’t get a bag, rares, precursors, hell I didn’t get almost any loot. And I still loved the event. I think the loot is one of the good parts of it. If everyone had gotten these things it wouldn’t have been special at all, and if no one had gotten them people would have said the reward wasn’t worth the battle. But the way it is now we have people who did get them, so we have this cool story, this happened, and I got this reward. And this causes envy, in new players and in players who missed out. They now want to be in an event like this and get a chance at rewards like that. It causes the players to be more invested in the game.

I hope they stick to their guns on this and don’t just start handing these things out to everyone just for participating. participating gives you a chance, you take that chance or you don’t.

You don’t have to be a part of this Awesome Story for it to be an awesome story, you can be a part of the next one, or the one after that.

Allow me to summarise:

I got mine, rest of the world gtfo.

USA, USA, etc.

I mean seriously. It’s not about ‘taking a chance’ if the event is held at 2am your local time.

The ‘I got mine’ mentality isn’t very nice. Demanding an event be one-time only on a very flimsy principle of luck-based elitism is pretty yuk.

Rather than loosening your screws and accepting that a few occurrences that allow, you know, the majority of the world to participate is actually conducive to a better game for everyone in the long term.

It truly takes very little for MMO companies to cater to timezones outside of the US.

Some of them have shown this. Those that don’t, well, they’re kind of lazy and useless.

One-time event is needed but make it available for different timezones.

I love one-time events. They made players feel anticipated and excited.

The big battle in phase 3, imo was epic.

one time events, simply no, no no and no

they can make some one day events which simply restrict the players to do it only once after SUCESSFULL completion, or better 1 week events which restrict them to 1 time completion

but one time events are just kitten,
different time zones on an international game which claimed it would be for EVERYONE enjoyable and noone would be left behind

cegorach.5624:

Allow me to summarise:

I got mine, rest of the world gtfo.

USA, USA, etc.

I mean seriously. It’s not about ‘taking a chance’ if the event is held at 2am your local time.

The ‘I got mine’ mentality isn’t very nice. Demanding an event be one-time only on a very flimsy principle of luck-based elitism is pretty yuk.

Rather than loosening your screws and accepting that a few occurrences that allow, you know, the majority of the world to participate is actually conducive to a better game for everyone in the long term.

It truly takes very little for MMO companies to cater to timezones outside of the US.

Some of them have shown this. Those that don’t, well, they’re kind of lazy and useless.

You should learn to read, or at least what summarize means. Because I actually said I didn’t get mine, I got almost no loot, and I also said that they should either rotate the time zones or have it start at diff times on diff servers.

SevenBitBrian.8413:

cegorach.5624:

Allow me to summarise:

I got mine, rest of the world gtfo.

USA, USA, etc.

I mean seriously. It’s not about ‘taking a chance’ if the event is held at 2am your local time.

The ‘I got mine’ mentality isn’t very nice. Demanding an event be one-time only on a very flimsy principle of luck-based elitism is pretty yuk.

Rather than loosening your screws and accepting that a few occurrences that allow, you know, the majority of the world to participate is actually conducive to a better game for everyone in the long term.

It truly takes very little for MMO companies to cater to timezones outside of the US.

Some of them have shown this. Those that don’t, well, they’re kind of lazy and useless.

You should learn to read, or at least what summarize means. Because I actually said I didn’t get mine, I got almost no loot, and I also said that they should either rotate the time zones or have it start at diff times on diff servers.

I can read perfectly well.

‘I got mine’ doesn’t refer to loot. It refers to the fact you can practically participate – while the majority of the world can’t.

‘Rotate time zones or have it start at diff times on diff servers’

So not a one time event then?

Because a one time event happens at…one time.

cegorach.5624:

SevenBitBrian.8413:

cegorach.5624:

Allow me to summarise:

I got mine, rest of the world gtfo.

USA, USA, etc.

I mean seriously. It’s not about ‘taking a chance’ if the event is held at 2am your local time.

The ‘I got mine’ mentality isn’t very nice. Demanding an event be one-time only on a very flimsy principle of luck-based elitism is pretty yuk.

Rather than loosening your screws and accepting that a few occurrences that allow, you know, the majority of the world to participate is actually conducive to a better game for everyone in the long term.

It truly takes very little for MMO companies to cater to timezones outside of the US.

Some of them have shown this. Those that don’t, well, they’re kind of lazy and useless.

You should learn to read, or at least what summarize means. Because I actually said I didn’t get mine, I got almost no loot, and I also said that they should either rotate the time zones or have it start at diff times on diff servers.

I can read perfectly well.

‘I got mine’ doesn’t refer to loot. It refers to the fact you can practically participate – while the majority of the world can’t.

‘Rotate time zones or have it start at diff times on diff servers’

So not a one time event then?

Because a one time event happens at…one time.

No a one time event happens once on the server, not once all at the same time. So you can make it happen once for the EU players servers and once for the US players servers. OR; If it happens once during US prime time this time, maybe make it happen once during EU or Aussie prime time next time. Or whatever timezone.

So what we can take from the OP is that hes just extremely selfish…and as long as he gets to have fun, screw anyone else….tell you what, lets keep the one time events and make them so they only appear at 3.00am Monday morning for you, ok ?
They will not rotate time slots, they will happen only when devs are available to monitor them, that is why they are a bad idea, the same people are gonna get shafted time and time again.

As i said in another thread, one time events are ancient nonsense that other MMO’s gave up ages ago because all they do is divide the community…who wants to be part of a game that actively excludes you from content just on the basis of where you live.

Robbyx.1284:

So what we can take from the OP is that hes just extremely selfish…and as long as he gets to have fun, screw anyone else….tell you what, lets keep the one time events and make them so they only appear at 3.00am Monday morning for you, ok ?
They will not rotate time slots, they will happen only when devs are available to monitor them, that is why they are a bad idea, the same people are gonna get shafted time and time again.

As i said in another thread, one time events are ancient nonsense that other MMO’s gave up ages ago because all they do is divide the community…who wants to be part of a game that actively excludes you from content just on the basis of where you live.

Yet another person who did not read. I’d be completely okay with them having the event at 3 am so I miss it. I missed half of this event because I was working. I missed the majority of the Halloween event. Just because I missed it though doesn’t mean it wasn’t good for the people who did get to do it, it doesn’t mean it wasn’t good for the game, and it doesn’t mean it didn’t cause awesome stories that make me want to not miss it next time.

SevenBitBrian.8413:

TimeBomb.3427:

“One time events” can be drastically improved by making them occur several times over a short time period rather than literally just once in the game’s lifetime. This wouldn’t harm the overall concept of one time events, but it would allow a lot more people to participate in them.

it’s not a one time event if it happens more than once.

ShadowPuppet.3746:

I actually like the one time events idea as well, the portion I did not enjoy was the rewards that some players were able to gain. I do not know the extent of how many people received precursor items in this event but I do know a few people personally that got multiple, by running on different characters. This creates a huge imbalance between the players that were able to participate and receive these rewards and the players who through other obligations were not able to participate. Personally for myself while I enjoyed the idea of the event, the execution of it was very lacking, I was never able to actually complete the event chain due to a late start, full overflows, disconnects, game crashes and when I finally did get close they ended the event. Having said all this I would like to see more of these types of events if they can figure out a better execution of it, but if they do I certainly hope they consider the disparity they can cause with the rewards for such events.

I don’t know, I didn’t get a bag, rares, precursors, hell I didn’t get almost any loot. And I still loved the event. I think the loot is one of the good parts of it. If everyone had gotten these things it wouldn’t have been special at all, and if no one had gotten them people would have said the reward wasn’t worth the battle. But the way it is now we have people who did get them, so we have this cool story, this happened, and I got this reward. And this causes envy, in new players and in players who missed out. They now want to be in an event like this and get a chance at rewards like that. It causes the players to be more invested in the game.

I hope they stick to their guns on this and don’t just start handing these things out to everyone just for participating. participating gives you a chance, you take that chance or you don’t.

You don’t have to be a part of this Awesome Story for it to be an awesome story, you can be a part of the next one, or the one after that.

I am not sure I can agree with the theory that this causes players to want to be invested in the game, the issue is not about envy. It is a very “real” possibility that the players that received these items of high value are now in a position to dictate and influence the economy of the game because of their sudden influx in excess material (in this case precursors). They can now purchase bulk materials to deprive the market and set the price higher, or any number of other ways to artificially destabilize the marketplace. I am not saying there should not have been any reward, if they want to give precursors make them account bound and problem solved in that department. This does however give the players that received these items (sometimes more than once) a large advantage over people that may have wanted to be there but were unable to because of other obligations. Now these people are not envious they are frustrated that a game would allow for such a thing as what happened. By the way, one of the reasons Anet gave for banning players with the cultural weapons fupaw was that they did not want some players to have such a large advantage over other players in regards to being able to dictate the economy. My post is of course speculation and my opinion, but I have been around in MMORPG’s to see what happens when people are suddenly able to have large amounts of excess “income” in the game. Time will tell if this happens here or not, I just think it is better to try and avoid a pitfall.

There are 3 reasons why the lost shore one time event failed:

1) overflow. The ones lucky with server hopping could open the end chest several times
2) timezones. The players in the Pacific area had no chance to participate
3) Players who like me have 2 accounts could not play with both of them.

SevenBitBrian.8413:

,or have it start at diff times on diff servers.

doesn’t work, as long as server hopping is free. The “clever” players had switched servers after seeing the endloot.

Simple solution: Repeat the event several times over 24 hrs (or a weekend) but make it available once only per account
(because of the fat endloot)

In my opinion, these non-cinematic one-time events should be a daily event, like a 24 hour event with various parts / areas to them.

The zones are enormous, the population is high… Have the event spread around in the area. Multiple Events occurring at the same time. Give it a true war-like feel to it. Have Dynamic events change the fronts (town criers / messengers running behind the lines announcing if the players have lost the an outpost / front at a specific place requiring reinforcements)… (This is actually what I first though how the Dynamic Events would be like when GW2 was still in dev… expected too much =P)

Make the content difficult, not cheap one-shot-kill-out-of-nowhere or enemies using cheap abilities. Difficult in the sense that, if players cluster together to tackle 1 specific event, the enemy will swoop in and completely invade / destroy / take over another portion of the grand-event taking away key features from the players putting them in a disadvantage.

Not only does this method give more life to the game and makes the player feel like they are part of a struggle (that’s what made the GW1 story better, the feeling of struggle), but it also reducing the clusterkitten zergfest feel of the game, not to mention less frame rate issues for players…

Being realistic though, I understand that having an event span across a large area will be quite stressful for the servers introducing lag and most probably disconnections… I don’t know the specs of the servers being used, but if possible, upgrading their hardware might solve that issue.

As for the reward, it would depend on the players participation. Spend enough time and you’ll get rewarded. Same for everyone, doesn’t matter which part of the event they participated in. None of that 1 person gets precursor the other gets junk. Maybe have special events which reward special for-show only items to brag with. Weapon skin / Armor skin / Mini pet… something, there’s plenty of stuff a player can be rewarded that doesn’t introduce vertical progression.

Having a large number of players in a small area for a small window to participate is asking for this kind of backlash. People dislike lag / slideshow fps / unfair reward / punished for attending RL matters / etc.

Then again, I’m not a Game Designer, nor is 99% of the people on these forums… People are throwing in their ideas, so I took the opportunity do throw mine in.

I think the patch that introduced the event will become a case study for game companies—a case study that will allow companies to avoid costly errors in judgment.

On the subject of the events themselves, I think they are like icing on the cake. First you bake the cake, then you apply the icing. It doesn’t work the other way around. There are too many fundamental issues with the game at this point to think that large one-time events are a good idea or even possible. Development resources are always scarce and there shouldn’t be events like this competing with class balance, bug fixes, mob fixes, etc., etc. Additionally, this event has proven that Anet is not ready to conduct events of this scale as they are just a frustrating mess. I would scale them back drastically. First you bake the cake, then you apply the icing.