Guild Wars 2

I’ve always felt that participation was a step in the wrong direction ever since HoT was released.

Participation:
-Encourages semi-afking for rewards
-Gives stress to players to “always do something or participation will decay”
-Encourages afking to “end the day” in WvW, which wastes spots in maps.
-Encouraged semi-afking in WvW, which wasted spots in map. Now that it has been “fixed”, it’s penalizing legit players like roamers instead.

What can be done if participation is removed:
-Make VB night a map-wide “major event” (with “mini-events” such as capturing and defending camps). Eg. Secure X number of camps to get bosses to spawn (gives rewards for doing so), then gives rewards depending on how many bosses were killed.
-AB doesn’t need participation at all. Just tie everything to event rewards.
-TD doesn’t need participation either. Just tie everything to event rewards.
-Same goes for DS. Just dish out the end-reward to everyone who kills MoM.
-For WvW, reward track can progress by X amount depending on events completed or what you do. Even trebbing can progress a little reward track too. Pips can be changed this way too. Maybe killing a dolyak rewards 1 pip, killing a player rewards 0.1 pip (values are just examples).

Lack of a participation bar just encourages leechers. Look at SW.

xiiliea.9356:

Participation:
-Encourages semi-afking for rewards
-Gives stress to players to “always do something or participation will decay”

So participation encourages you to stop playing while simultaneously making you want to play more? Well, this participation system is mighty powerful stuff. I wouldn’t think that was even possible.

Skittish.4539:

xiiliea.9356:

Participation:
-Encourages semi-afking for rewards
-Gives stress to players to “always do something or participation will decay”

So participation encourages you to stop playing while simultaneously making you want to play more? Well, this participation system is mighty powerful stuff. I wouldn’t think that was even possible.

“Do something” doesn’t mean actually help the map out. It can mean doing “something” then afking, like just tag one mob then afk. I’m talking more about the stress here. For players who aren’t afk, it makes them feel like the game is forcing them to play, rather than letting them find events at their own pace.

Ayrilana.1396:

Lack of a participation bar just encourages leechers. Look at SW.

You can leech with participation too, aka semi-afking. Coming back from afk every 5 minutes to kill a single mob doesn’t really help the map either.

xiiliea.9356:

Skittish.4539:

xiiliea.9356:

Participation:
-Encourages semi-afking for rewards
-Gives stress to players to “always do something or participation will decay”

So participation encourages you to stop playing while simultaneously making you want to play more? Well, this participation system is mighty powerful stuff. I wouldn’t think that was even possible.

“Do something” doesn’t mean actually help the map out.

In pve it does. Any random mob won’t contribute to map meta participation. Only things that count in pve are events, combat hero points (only once a day for each hp) and getting silver and gold in adventures (not sure how you can afk farm an adventure). Them’s the only sources of map meta participation, at least according to the wiki.

xiiliea.9356:

Ayrilana.1396:

Lack of a participation bar just encourages leechers. Look at SW.

You can leech with participation too, aka semi-afking. Coming back from afk every 5 minutes to kill a single mob doesn’t really help the map either.

Your suggestion would make it easier and worse. It would be going backwards.

This is another gaming issue for which there aren’t any great solutions. Just decent and mediocre ones, each of which offers some decent pros and requires trading off some icky side-effects.

• “No participation” is the system in place for the core game. It encourages people to tag and run, resulting in things like the Silverwastes RABI system.
• “Intense participation” is the system HoT has at launch. It forces people to tether to events for long periods, which is hardly “casual”
• “Keep participating” (pardon the pun) is the WvW system and requires you to keep finding eligible targets to avoid losing participation.
• “Mostly participate” is the current HoT system, in which you want to contribute to several successful events before you leave the map. It’s rewarding & time consuming, allowing some tag & run.

So sure, ANet hasn’t figured out the perfect balance to this, anymore than they’ve perfectly balanced “good loot” versus “economically useless loot” (or balanced storage or inventory management perfectly). It’s an inherently tricky problem and probably will never have a solution that’s beloved by all fans.

Participation system is an imperfect solution to the issue of leechers in massive group content. While it may cause semi-AFKing, I know I wait around PvP until I’m sure I’m not getting points added to my reward track, at least it gets people to come in and play the activity which I see as a plus.

To maintain my participation, i have to participate? In what kind of world do we live???

Offair.2563:

To maintain my participation, i have to participate? In what kind of world do we live???

deadhorse.gif

I’ve barely ever seen anyone semi-afk on purpose and I’ve done pretty much everything there is to do in overland PvE.

The only time I’ve seen and personally done that is when doing daily events on a map, but it’s common courtesy more than anything and I wish more people did that (e.g. tag only one enemy or fetch only one quest item, and let others participate and earn their daily event).