Guild Wars 2

I’m two skill challenges away from 100% world completion. Both of these are in Malchor’s Leap, and neither is obtainable on my own. One is at an underwater Statue of Melandur, which when contested cripples and bleeds and interrupts channeling. The other is guarded by a Champion Risen Knight who doesn’t seem to be willing to call a truce.

So here I am just two skill challenges away from world completion, and I can’t get it because there’s virtually no one in Orr. Orr was designed to be the place to be at end game. But somewhere along the line, players decided they didn’t want to be there. Then ArenaNet tried to lure them back with promises of Champion Loot. Two weeks later then lured them away with promises of even better loot.

So now the region is abandoned, leaving those who need various skill challenges out of luck unless they’ve got a big enough guild to back them up. Unfortunately, I’m committed to a very small guild consisting of friends and family. We’ve nowhere near the firepower to clear Temples or fight back Champion Risen Knights in Orr.

I don’t know what the plans for Orr going forward are, but it’s clear something needs to be done. Even if the Champion Zergs jumping from zone to zone in pursuit of Scarlet’s loot return after this portion of the Living Story closes, these are not exactly the type of people who are going to sacrifice DPS (drops per second) to help someone out.

The only idea I could come up with that didn’t involve killing the Champion Loot system is a “the gods have extended their blessing” system wherein a server-wide bonus to gold and magic find (I’m talking a significant bonus here) was awarded so long as all Temples were under Pact control. I don’t know if this would actually get players back into Orr, but it’s the only thing I could come up with.

Whatever the developers decide to do, I hope they somehow find that balance wherein Orr is appealing to loot-chasers without becoming the place to farm. I like the idea of players spreading out into the rest of the world (even though I don’t like that they’re doing so in the form of one big blob of farmers), but neither do I want people to be alone in Orr staring at something they need yet are unable to obtain.

I agree that the statue effects can be really problematic for exploration, specially now that the maps are a lot more empty. Personally I had trouble getting the balthazar skill point because fire kept raining on me while I was channeling the point (no, I don’t have access to aegis/stationary evade), and when I was finally completing it some random veteran risen aggro’d on me. Overall I spent a good 15 minutes there between trying to avoid the fire and clearing respawning undead and not a single soul on map/map chat appeared.

By the way, I could help you with the Champion Risen Knight if you want.

I agree with you. I just reacently enterd Orr and it is a nightmare! I almost clared the first area except for that on skill point imbedded in the middle of “HELL” that is Balthasar temple (i probably didn’t spell that right anyway). To make things wors i think these living world stories are making it harder to compleate those events in Orr since most people are doing those and chasing the loot at the end of that rainbow. It comes to a point that it is impossible to do anything else in Orr then runn from bush to bush and not atract attention from the dozzens of your UN-friendly neibourhood unded. And it doesn’t help that almost 80% of the waypoints are contested. Players that are only now coming to Orr have a realy hard time and i hope ANet fixses something. P.S.: Sorry for the bad grammar.

Well, consider what Orr is.

It’s a piece of land (and occasionally water) with a bunch of risen.

Except for the temples which at least give us a touch of history, most of the place is boring and repetitive. I remember how I just pretended the southern part of Cursed Shore just doesn’t exist. Most of the better zones in the game have some story to tell. Orr is the generic “endgame” land where they just throw the strongest enemies at you.

It needs more flavor and maybe more advancement by courageous adventurers and prospectors looking for opportunities after Zhitan’s fall and just stop going back and forth between Jofast and whatnot.

Yes, I understand none of this applies to people who just go after shinies and ignore everything else, but to them the game might as well be in a tiny enclosed square with tons of mobs and a lever to receive loot.

the champion knight is easy. just buy an ash legion spy kit, lure the boss away from the skill challenge then run back and activate the spy kit right next to the skill challenge and start channeling while invisible. goodluck!

Both are soloable, medium difficulty.

The one with the flying risen knight, clear mobs in the general area, and then pull the knight away, he walks slow so you can run back to the skillpoint and cap it before he gets to you to interrupt you or 1 shot you.

Balthazar temple just takes patience, you must clear the area, and the vets can be a pain because they spawn adds so bring a aoe build or a high dps build that can insta gib the adds, once the area is clear spam the point.

Also the melandru one is a pain too, again just clear all the mobs and spam the point.

Taerik first of O_o . Second I do belive you must be very good at the game becouse 5 people were not able to do it and they knew what they were doing. I confess i’m not a great or eaven a good player but i can hold my own in most areas but the things that happened to me were just crazy.

PM me in game and ill show you how I do it, once you learn the trick its not do bad

darkace.8925:

The other is guarded by a Champion Risen Knight who doesn’t seem to be willing to call a truce.

I got this one on my ranger courtesy of an Ash Legion spy kit.

I agree, something must be done about Orr,
although i want to say also that i am no hard core gamer at all, and i completed the 3 deserted Orr maps alone , with all the places taken by “Orraians”, with my lvl 80 Ranger!

I can guarantee you that even that points that interrupt you, can be done.
All you need is time and lots and lots of patience!!

Orr didn’t work. ANet’s solution? MAKE MORE ZONES LIKE ORR, LULZ.

Orr is one big HELL HOLE!

0/10 for misleading title.
On the side note, the Melandru temple event is completed every now and then; you might need to guest into another server to get that skill point.

Melandru temple can be done with a large zerg or by 5-6 people. Anything between is a pain.

The one with the Champion Risen Knight takes 2 people (one to aggro, one to commune) or an Ash Legion spy kit.

Thanks for the tips, guys, but the point of the thread was supposed to be about Orr and how to fix it (if you think it needs fixing). The anecdote was just to illustrate one of the problems that arises when a zone designed for high populations isn’t highly populated.

Here is what I think would be cool for Orr.
In the story step right before Arah, the place is supposed to have been cleansed at the well. It would be neat if Anet made it so after all of your story is finished, instead of zoning into normal Orr as we know it, we zone into a new version of Orr that is a lush jungle zone that people are trying to rebuild. I think that would be very nifty. It would have little to no risen in it and would have plenty of interesting places to check out.

One major problem is that for a “Living World” were we constantly make and see changes to the world the idea of having Orr be “endgame” doesn’t work. It doesn’t work with any area. There has to be a constant’y evolving map or reasons to be in said maps.
What’s really happening is this:
Story Starts → Story leads to new location → Old location becomes obsolete → Story progress again → More areas become obsolete.
The ONLY reason this gets to be a problem is because Orr was, at the time, designed to be “endgame”. There are things in Orr meant to be done only with large groups of people who want to get it done. No other zones are designed with such difficulty or content in mind. When they decided upon this “Living World” initiative it destroyed the idea of an endgame zone and thereby undermined the very way they had initially designed the location. Trying to draw attention back to the area is simply not going to work because as the game expands the area just gets more “out of date” compared to events that are actually happening. At the same time we can’t change the landscape because the area looks the way it does due to the personal story ties from when the game had a slight RPG elements. The only real solution is to adjust and modify the area so that things like Temples, Skill points, PoI, Vistas, and Waypoints are all readily available to solo players.

TBH they have so much awesome room in Orr that should be relooked at and improved.

The temple affecting the everyone is definately a good idea the only problem I can see is people guesting on servers that have the buff, so there would need to be some cooldown on guesting or something.

If each temple gave it’s own tiny buff and each one also gave magic find/gold/xp/karma boosts in small amounts that stacked with other temple buffs, you’d bet people would be doing them to get those running. =p

Hell they could even give it it’s own UI just like World v World with all the benefits and temple status, and maybe make it so people only get boosts from their server like WvW which could stop the guesting issue.

Orr was supposed to be like a PvE war like WvW anyway right? So go do it Anet.

darkace.8925:

Thanks for the tips, guys, but the point of the thread was supposed to be about Orr and how to fix it (if you think it needs fixing). The anecdote was just to illustrate one of the problems that arises when a zone designed for high populations isn’t highly populated.

Right. Sorry. Here we go then.

(cue cool 80s style TV theme music written by Mike Post)

Like Magnum p.i., I have a ‘little voice’, and the first time one of my characters entered Orr, my little voice said, loud and clear, “This place was made by people who absolutely and utterly hate the people who play their games.”

Now, I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right: my opinion of Orr has not changed.

(80s music ends)
(cue Chopin’s Funeral March)

As for how to fix it, well, Orr is just a symptom. Treating the symptom won’t effect a cure, and with the appearance of further, more advanced symptoms such as Ascended Gear and Living Story, I fear there is nothing that can be done. We can but stand by and watch, helplessly, as what might have been becomes what should never be.

(thunder/lightning crash, then fade to black)

(cue Peer Gynt Suite No.1 by Edvard Grieg)

Beyond that, I’d like to see them come up with an alternate Orr for those who have completed the Personal Story, in which the bulk of the work in the region turns toward reclamation and restoration, with the option, whenever you choose to visit Orr, of choosing pre-Personal Story or post-Personal Story Orr.

Drop an atomic bomb on that hole

Anyone looking for map completion-
NSP does a full sweep through Arah>Grenth>Lyss>Dwayna>Balthazar>Eye at reset tonight. I’m not sure how many people will be there today because loot is meh, but we can usually do it in about 2 hours.

darkace.8925:

Thanks for the tips, guys, but the point of the thread was supposed to be about Orr and how to fix it (if you think it needs fixing). The anecdote was just to illustrate one of the problems that arises when a zone designed for high populations isn’t highly populated.

I stand chastised.

ANet’s 1st attempt to fix Orr was to reduce the number of mobs. This worked pretty well. Other than a few bottlenecks, travel became more user friendly. To make travel in Orr (and everywhere) more user-friendly, do away with the concept of contested waypoints being blocked. Leave the contested icon as a warning, but don’t block travel. If someone wants to risk traveling to an area, let them take the risk.

ANet’s 2nd attempt to fix Orr was to change the abilities of some of the Risen. This has proceeded in stages, with more Risen being changed (and sometimes changed multiple times). The changes have been met with mixed reviews. To make the Risen more interesting and more fun, change them as follows:

• Eliminate summons or have summoned mobs drop loot as per their type.
• Change Risen spawns so that they have varied composition. Waves of all nobles, spiders, putrifiers, etc. are boring, and usually present only one challenge per spawn (e.g., avoid noble AoE, dodge big spider pulls, etc.).
• Reduce Risen CC and increase their auto-attack damage. Their CC is on too short of a CD, probably because they have 1-2 moves each. Make them more like players, with some of them having a little CC individually, and vary the ways they do damage. They already have the basics of this done, just tweak it.

ANet’s 3rd attempt to fix Orr was to increase the timers on events to discourage farming the same events over and over. The net result is unless you were node tapping, exploring or coming to Orr specifically to do a Temple, there was no reason to be there. More later.

ANet’s 4th attempt to fix Orr was to increase Champion loot. This made the Champion bags afaik the 2nd most desirable drop in the game (after Precursors). Event scaling would then produce (as was touted by Colin) Champions-on-demand. The result of this (before the invasions, anyway) was that players were hunting Champions and ignoring everything else.

These last two tie together. Champion loot bags fixed the issue of “no reason to fight a Champion.” They did almost nothing to fix Orr. Why? Orr was designed so thakittens strength was event chains, not be a Champion farmville. Event chains have been failures for several reasons: they are time intensive in comparison to other events, or Champion farming; they are relatively difficult, especially in mid-sized groups; and the rewards were not enough to overcome the other issues.

How to fix this? I see two options.

(1) Rip the event chains out of Orr. Leave the smaller events, and add more of them. Put more Champions on the map. Increase Champion scaling so they become less punishing to smaller groups, and a lot more punishing versus greater numbers of players to encourage players to spread out more.

or

(2) Rework rewards. Increase event rewards across Orr. Make them more rewarding than any other area. Increase the number or frequency of soloable events in Orr.
Increase event chain end rewards to outstrip Champion drops. Reduce the rewards in Champion containers slightly and change the scaling in events to produce fewer Champions. Events and event chains, the strength of Orr, will only become popular again if they are the best game in town.

I think number 2 is a better option, with apologies to those who prefer Champion farming. I believe Champions-on-demand giving the best rewards in open world was a mistake. It should have been events-on-demand, with those events providing the best rewards.

Well regardless of the OP’s personal reasons for creating the thread.

The point stands:
http://www.gw2state.com/temples.html
Completion of the events themselves is at an all time low.
…And yes, this IS because of several….. SEVERAL … things Anet did wrong recently and still hasn’t explained. Even after getting that Josh guy in the bug threads to whip that forum back into shape, they still haven’t addressed ANY of the threads affecting Temples there.

They’ve basically put Orr in stasis now b/c their recent experiment with it totally BACKFIRED. I don’t blame them running away from the problem now considering what a mess they’ve made of it. It’s going to a lot more effort now on their part to bring back the people they’ve recently driven away from it.

- There are three end game Orrian zones. Players were never going to be split across all three completing the major events, particularly when two of those zones are below level 80.
- The designers struggle to make really good large scale events. It could be the best feature of the game but it hasn’t really happened.
- The designers struggle to balance rewards. With each patch the players migrate to the new most rewarding content and that isn’t Orr.
- Dailies, the living story, and other recent content entirely excludes Orr. This is presumably an intentional design decision.
- Players leave permanent endgame content to do the living story. This is how it should be so Orr needs to function despite that.
- Bots have farmed Orr in the past so Anet have altered the events to prevent their return but the new events are less popular.

Anyway fixing Cursed Shore starts with the balancing of rewards vs time across the whole game. Fractals, dungeons, world bosses, and open world events have never been balanced and are no closer than before to being balanced (the living story can be afford to be generous since it is temporary).

Or, Anet could just stop being lazy and releasing untested content. And then systematically go through the existing content and tweak it to scale for single players like it was supposed to be in the first place. Then they wouldn’t have to constantly worry about people filtering out of certain areas.

Even in the starter areas half of the non-group events cannot be solo’d except on certain classes and builds, and it goes worse the higher level you get. Pretty much everything in Orr might as well be labeled as group content. This needs to change.

darkace.8925:

I’m two skill challenges away from 100% world completion. Both of these are in Malchor’s Leap, and neither is obtainable on my own. One is at an underwater Statue of Melandur, which when contested cripples and bleeds and interrupts channeling. The other is guarded by a Champion Risen Knight who doesn’t seem to be willing to call a truce.

So here I am just two skill challenges away from world completion, and I can’t get it because there’s virtually no one in Orr. Orr was designed to be the place to be at end game. But somewhere along the line, players decided they didn’t want to be there. Then ArenaNet tried to lure them back with promises of Champion Loot. Two weeks later then lured them away with promises of even better loot.

So now the region is abandoned, leaving those who need various skill challenges out of luck unless they’ve got a big enough guild to back them up. Unfortunately, I’m committed to a very small guild consisting of friends and family. We’ve nowhere near the firepower to clear Temples or fight back Champion Risen Knights in Orr.

I don’t know what the plans for Orr going forward are, but it’s clear something needs to be done. Even if the Champion Zergs jumping from zone to zone in pursuit of Scarlet’s loot return after this portion of the Living Story closes, these are not exactly the type of people who are going to sacrifice DPS (drops per second) to help someone out.

No, Orr is fine, I usually go there most every day. It’s just your timing is all wrong, the invasion is going on. Like with every living story release, Orr empties out for a week or so. Otherwise, still quite a lot of people play there.

As for those two spots in ML, they can be soloed with a stealth thief. Otherwise you either need to wait for the newness of the living story to wear off or ask around the zone or LA at peak to start a party for it. If any change is needed, needs to be changed to be harder again.

^Don’t listen to that guy^ …it gets thin at times but it’s NEVER been this empty before.

Celebratty.1632:

Anyone looking for map completion-
NSP does a full sweep through Arah>Grenth>Lyss>Dwayna>Balthazar>Eye at reset tonight. I’m not sure how many people will be there today because loot is meh, but we can usually do it in about 2 hours.

This too has also been quickly falling apart. …with barely enough people showing up any more to do Melandru while Grenth has failed multiple times (we never used to fail Grenth unless someone pulled aggro on priest and then stood directly on Jonez).

The people who stopped showing up b/c they thought farming Aetherblades was more important, are going to be in for a surprise when they try to return to ye old 5:00pm reset, …and just see an Empty Meddlers. …No banners, no one chatting, no omnoms…. just a few AFK’s and that annoying NPC who won’t shut up about Maak.

Someone already posted the way to do it. There’s really no hard SP, relatively speaking. I have done all SPs in Orr using: Thief, Mesmer, Elementalist, Necromancer, Guardian, Warrior, and Ranger. I haven’t done it as an Engineer, only because my Engineer is Lv29 but I’m pretty sure I can do it too if I put my mind to it.

And yes, all solo….you just got to learn the tricks of the trade, some you may need to do a couple of times, others more than that, but most are easy, If there’s anything moderately hard, it’s the one at Cursed Shore guarded by Risen Noble Champion that can insta-down you. The trick there is wait for the Champ to walk away, kill all other adds (or go invis with kit, or skill, etc) then quickly steal the SP.

ilr.9675:

^Don’t listen to that guy^ …it gets thin at times but it’s NEVER been this empty before.

It doesn’t get thin at times, it empties out at the start of every living story. It’s just a fact, hold your hands over your eyes or not. I’ve run temple chains a LOT over the past year in commander mode, and have the map completions for Orr, it’s no different than the last time the living story started, nor the time before.

Orr is awesome, just needs to be more challenging again is all. When they nerfed it last time, that’s when the population deflated some after doing so. But it’s been generally stable over the past six months or so, apart from living story releases.

Oh yeah, and yes probably disguise kits would work. Otherwise, if you intend to solo it, probably a better chance to get to 80 with gear if you haven’t already, then work your way back. Those zones may be lower, but they are no less difficult. Actually cursed shore is probably the easiest to map complete.

Daywolf.2630:

ilr.9675:

^Don’t listen to that guy^ …it gets thin at times but it’s NEVER been this empty before.

It doesn’t get thin at times, it empties out at the start of every living story. It’s just a fact, hold your hands over your eyes or not. I’ve run temple chains a LOT over the past year in commander mode, and have the map completions for Orr, it’s no different than the last time the living story started, nor the time before.

Orr is awesome, just needs to be more challenging again is all. When they nerfed it last time, that’s when the population deflated some after doing so. But it’s been generally stable over the past six months or so, apart from living story releases.

Yes, people flock to new content. That doesn’t mean they’ll return to Orr. Some servers, they might, others, they won’t. FC’s Orr was on the desolate side and has been since the Pen/Shelter timer increase — and it was none too healthy then. So, your server’s Orr is fine, and you aren’t experiencing the problem. That’s just wonderful, but does nothing to solve the problem on other servers.

Lol I didn’t even read his post once I noticed it was just Ad Hominem
I already posted the Facts: http://www.gw2state.com/temples.html

anyone ignoring those is the real Ostrich here

IndigoSundown.5419:

Daywolf.2630:

ilr.9675:

^Don’t listen to that guy^ …it gets thin at times but it’s NEVER been this empty before.

It doesn’t get thin at times, it empties out at the start of every living story. It’s just a fact, hold your hands over your eyes or not. I’ve run temple chains a LOT over the past year in commander mode, and have the map completions for Orr, it’s no different than the last time the living story started, nor the time before.

Orr is awesome, just needs to be more challenging again is all. When they nerfed it last time, that’s when the population deflated some after doing so. But it’s been generally stable over the past six months or so, apart from living story releases.

Yes, people flock to new content. That doesn’t mean they’ll return to Orr. Some servers, they might, others, they won’t. FC’s Orr was on the desolate side and has been since the Pen/Shelter timer increase — and it was none too healthy then. So, your server’s Orr is fine, and you aren’t experiencing the problem. That’s just wonderful, but does nothing to solve the problem on other servers.

The sky is falling? They returned after the previous living stories. ‘What if’ arguments are sort of pointless. Right now it’s empty. The only servers I’d imagine they are not empty would be the European ones, they hard core Orr addicts. Almost makes me want to move to Europe… meh

Orr is fine. People just need to actually go there. No matter what ArenaNet does, short of buffing loot for those who choose to zerg events, it will remain dead. Orr is only broken (Besides events that do have a tendency to bug) because nobody bothers to do any events or even visit the zones. New content generally takes precedence over old content. As more permanent new content is added, older content will die out. Look at Southsun for instance. During the event, there were tons of people there, now it is deader than Orr.

What could fix the zones would be an underflow (As was pointed out in the suggestions section), wherein if there are too few players, a new instance of the zone is created, merging the zone(s) from low-pop servers. However, the events that have a high likelihood of bugging need to be fixed.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ash_Legion_Spy_Kit

Spy kits still work for skill points, its how i got the points guarded by champs on my last character.

darkace.8925:

I’m two skill challenges away from 100% world completion. Both of these are in Malchor’s Leap, and neither is obtainable on my own. One is at an underwater Statue of Melandur, which when contested cripples and bleeds and interrupts channeling. The other is guarded by a Champion Risen Knight who doesn’t seem to be willing to call a truce.

it’s ez bro. but if you can’t do it get a friend to help ;D

A lot of things don’t work, orr is just one of them..

Ask a guildie or friend to tag a long..

I think the big issue with Orr is that you can’t do a lot of it with small groups. It just requires some serious backing. Other areas you get get a snowball effect from events, you start one on your lonesome, soon more people come a long wanting a piece of the pie till you have group, which is one the things I enjoy about other areas.

I think having events scale down to needing as many to 5 people and then scaling up as more join would be more appealing, as it stands the area only works when lots of people are in it (and its fun when people are doing events and clearing statues).

Also, the enemies are annoying, I don’t know anyone who enjoys the risen, lol.

Daywolf.2630:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Daywolf.2630:

ilr.9675:

^Don’t listen to that guy^ …it gets thin at times but it’s NEVER been this empty before.

It doesn’t get thin at times, it empties out at the start of every living story. It’s just a fact, hold your hands over your eyes or not. I’ve run temple chains a LOT over the past year in commander mode, and have the map completions for Orr, it’s no different than the last time the living story started, nor the time before.

Orr is awesome, just needs to be more challenging again is all. When they nerfed it last time, that’s when the population deflated some after doing so. But it’s been generally stable over the past six months or so, apart from living story releases.

Yes, people flock to new content. That doesn’t mean they’ll return to Orr. Some servers, they might, others, they won’t. FC’s Orr was on the desolate side and has been since the Pen/Shelter timer increase — and it was none too healthy then. So, your server’s Orr is fine, and you aren’t experiencing the problem. That’s just wonderful, but does nothing to solve the problem on other servers.

The sky is falling? They returned after the previous living stories. ‘What if’ arguments are sort of pointless. Right now it’s empty. The only servers I’d imagine they are not empty would be the European ones, they hard core Orr addicts. Almost makes me want to move to Europe… meh

I’m saying that on some servers, the population has not been in Orr — except for a few bots and node farmers — for months, whether there was a new Living Story update, or not. Your server is not my server. Next time, I’ll say. “Because it’s fine for you on your server does not make it fine for all players on all servers.” Would that be clear enough for you to understand?