Guild Wars 2

This portion of this event has no purpose other than for players to just spam (most of the time) the keys. They aren’t actually playing anything or they just sit there waiting for the instance to close. If people want to play they’ll have their own instruments or use the consumable bells. In fact, you could just give them a consumable bell for participation so they can play outside the event and save time for everyone.

In addition to removing this portion of the event, and the more important point, it would also solve the problem of joining a Bell Choir instance and not being able to gain anything from it because the whole point of being there is already gone. AKA Karma and gifts. The whole last 4 or so minutes of this event is nothing but people joining these near empty games and leaving. 4 whole minutes for an event that is practically done! That’s probably a lot of unnecessary network traffic.

So, by removing this portion of this event you eliminate people joining late in the game who recieve nothing, ANET saves themselves some possible network mayhem, and no more time is wasted. I don’t expect this to happen this year since it’s already here but for next year….hint hint.

I hope that this can be implemented. Bell Choir is one of my favorite activities but all the waiting around is tedious.

kitten , no shame to the grind huh?
Personally hope that A-Net never does something like this, the main reason to do these winter events is for the fun, I am personally not gonna grind, this or the next year. But them having a more open and welcoming event, is never a bad thing in my eyes.

I get that you might waste 4 minutes (or 1), but what is the reason to do the events if not for fun at this point? Rewards is far from good enough to use hours on end on the event

zengara.8301:

kitten , no shame to the grind huh?
Personally hope that A-Net never does something like this, the main reason to do these winter events is for the fun, I am personally not gonna grind, this or the next year. But them having a more open and welcoming event, is never a bad thing in my eyes.

No shame to the grind because people do grind this.
No shame to the fun because people do this for fun.
The event itself more than open and welcoming to people of any and all skill levels.

zengara.8301:

I get that you might waste 4 minutes (or 1)

So you understand there is time wasted. That’s good.

zengara.8301:

but what is the reason to do the events if not for fun at this point?

I never said that it wouldn’t be fun? My argument is against removing the last portion of the Bell Choir event that wastes time on players part and possibly causes unnecessary network traffic. You’re trying to argue that I’m saying the event itself isn’t fun the way it is? Or are you trying to argue that those last 4 minutes ARE somehow…fun? When, as suggested, rewarding the player with a consumable bell that they can play at any time (for any reason and anywhere) would be the same thing as sitting in that instance playing the bell. The same amount of fun is had…or more since you could do whatever you want with the consumable. You’re not limited in movement or to an area/instance if consumable bells were rewarded.

zengara.8301:

Rewards is far from good enough to use hours on end on the event

I never said anything about the rewards either. Stay on topic. The “Play as you like” portion of the Bell Choir instance (which does NOT have rewards for completing so bringing up rewards has nothing to do with this).

Agreed, it’s kinda pointless part. So far I have not heard anyone actually trying to play something during that.

I would love to see “play anything” removed from Bell Choir. Only on extremely rare occasions do you even get people playing anything, its usually just spam or people do nothing and just wait (myself, I just Alt-Tab out after playing a note and watch for my GW2 icon to start blinking, which indicates the new game has loaded). Its not even about farm efficiency (though that would benfit as well) but rather just overall enjoyment. Its no fun waiting around for 2 minutes when all you want to do is play the songs.

But its been requested basically since Bell Choir was added 4 years ago and never happened, so I’m not holding my breath.

This sounds like a good idea. It’s always bad when you warp into the map and it’s already on the “play as you like” part. Almost nobody actually plays anything during this section so any arguments involving “fun” are negated since obviously people don’t find it fun.

In DS you were/are unable to join instances that killed the mouth of mordremoth and are in the “reward-phase”. Why not implement the same for the bell choir? Once the main part is over and free play begins, no one can join anymore and people are free to move on to the next instance. Would be better than nothing at least.

I’ve always been a big fan of the Bell Choir activity. I’ve never seen the point of the “play anything” round. And it’s particularly annoying to load into a map that’s about to start the “play anything” round because you won’t get any kind of credit for participating in just that part.

I enjoy the bell choir activity. I do NOT enjoy the “play anything you like” phase.

/petition signed

The main problem I see with this is that now that it is so easy to acquire an unbreakable bell(this has been the case since last year) this section seems completely pointless. Anyone who wants to play whatever they want can just get an unbreakable bell for 57c and play it forever without having to bother with joining any instances.

I love bell choir but also not a fan of this event. However I think with just a few changes it could be improved

• Don’t let anyone into a map that is on this stage of the event, as there is nothing for them to gain from it

• Post a list of songs that players can pick from during this if they choose. It starts that song so that they can play something that sounds good. But drop the loot from it so that they don’t feel like they have to participate if they don’t want to

• Offer a different instance of Bell Choir that has nothing but play as you like so that people who prefer this can do it all the time.

I would love it more actually, if they just removed the stupid laughing/cheers from the ambient background while ‘waiting for players’ portion,
in my opnion it’s most annoying part of the activity.
I just want to tell the crowd to shut up.
The applause is nice, but the constant jeering/laughing,
sooo annoying

I agree with not having people join one that is in the Play As You Like part (though I suppose even that part would count for a Daily Activity, tedious though it is). Mostly because they’ll just get booted out again when it’s done, it doesn’t offer a chance to be guaranteed a beginning spot in the next round.

But when I’m doing a series of Choir rounds, I enjoy that short segment for the chance to flex my hands, type in chat, inventory manage (I am impatient, I want to open my gifts right away ), and in general do things that don’t require both hands and both eyes to stay glued to keyboard and screen. Also it affords a chance to think about whether to take a break or keep going. So I’d like the free-play section to stay in, as long as it doesn’t waste the time of people just joining the instance.

It’s awkward for me. Nobody plays anything – they just… stand there waiting.

Khisanth.2948:

The main problem I see with this is that now that it is so easy to acquire an unbreakable bell(this has been the case since last year) this section seems completely pointless. Anyone who wants to play whatever they want can just get an unbreakable bell for 57c and play it forever without having to bother with joining any instances.

I collected 4 or 5 of those last year. And then there was the second version which I have somewhere in my inventory…..

/signed

If someone is interested in Play As You Like, choir bells are 3 copper on the trading post right now.

/signed

This combined with the “world full” bug tends to eat minutes off my karma buffs.

-World full…
-World full…
-World full…
-World full…
-World full…
-World full…
-Ah, I’m in!
-Nevermind, free to play phase…
-Waiting for it to end…
-Zoning to new instance…
-World full…
-Back to Divinity’s Reach

Rinse and repeat.

This part should be removed entirely (the last 3-4 minutes).

If ANet cared, there would be a “practice this song” option with accuracy/no damage instead and it would be BEFORE not after.

It would be nice, but I don’t expect for them to care enough anymore. My favorite part is joining the map with this crap going on with the huge “0 – 600” at the top of the screen.

Manasa Devi.7958:

/signed

This combined with the “world full” bug tends to eat minutes off my karma buffs.

Rinse and repeat.

This is the biggest problem with it for me. The waiting and constantly retrying part is obnoxious but the part that really ticks me off is wasting my karma buffs. Especially since 50% boosters are so rare these days, I had some saved up and the time you have them up is too valuable to waste spending 10 minutes trying to get into a whole bell choir round while doing nothing else.

After the first couple of days I just decided to use two different toons now. One with the premium buffs for the orphans each day and another with the easy to get buffs just to spam bell choir until i finally get one that is worth doing.

Same here. Big fan of the activity, playing for the fun of it, the gifts are a nice add to it.

Please remoive the “Play whatever you like” part. It serves no purpose and makes the instance take longer to set up a new game.

Players who enjoy playing their own or other tunes are free to buy an instrument or use the one-of’s that drop like candy during the season to “play whatever they like” wherever they feel like it.

Surely the only purpose is to delay the start of the next round so you can’t farm presents faster than the other activities? Same as the waiting for players takes ages between songs.
Don’t get me wrong I’d love it to be removed tho.

Manasa Devi.7958:

/signed

This combined with the “world full” bug tends to eat minutes off my karma buffs.

-World full…
-World full…
-World full…
-World full…
-World full…
-World full…
-Ah, I’m in!
-Nevermind, free to play phase…
-Waiting for it to end…
-Zoning to new instance…
-World full…
-Back to Divinity’s Reach

Rinse and repeat.

This completely. I love bell choir, I hate trying to join an instance and I hate joining to find that they’re playing the last song so it’s not worth being there. Then you have to fight again to find a new instance or afk around and hope it actually moves you into a new instance.

Yeah, I’ll add my support to the play as you like section being useless. If I was trying to free play bells anyway, I’d certainly be doing it for longer than the allotted time.

Artaz.3819:

This part should be removed entirely (the last 3-4 minutes).

If ANet cared, there would be a “practice this song” option with accuracy/no damage instead and it would be BEFORE not after.

This makes complete sense.

DocRimpel.5280:

Surely the only purpose is to delay the start of the next round so you can’t farm presents faster than the other activities?

Isn’t JP faster than bells already?

A better way to solve this would be to turn the pointless “Play whatever you like” segment into the most important part of the event.

Give people 30 seconds to construct a tune and then randomly assign everyones’ tunes to other people and have them attempt the swapped tunes for greater rewards.

Implemented as follows:
As the “play whatever you want” section starts, your character gets 30 ammo for or ringing bells and a one second recharge between consecutive bell swings. Every time you ring a note, an orb goes away from your character towards the end of the lane that note usually approaches from.

When the 30 seconds are up, you get to try someone else’s composition. If you get it right, you get 5 presents. If the person on the other end gets your tune at least 80% right, you get another 5 presents.

Gerrand.3085:

Give people 30 seconds to construct a tune and then randomly assign everyones’ tunes to other people and have them attempt the swapped tunes for greater rewards.

Implemented as follows:
As the “play whatever you want” section starts, your character gets 30 ammo for or ringing bells and a one second recharge between consecutive bell swings. Every time you ring a note, an orb goes away from your character towards the end of the lane that note usually approaches from.

When the 30 seconds are up, you get to try someone else’s composition. If you get it right, you get 5 presents. If the person on the other end gets your tune at least 80% right, you get another 5 presents.

Sounds like fun. I’d mash the keyboard and another player gets to agonize over all 8 notes flying at them super fast and completely random!

Boysenberry.1869:

Gerrand.3085:

Give people 30 seconds to construct a tune and then randomly assign everyones’ tunes to other people and have them attempt the swapped tunes for greater rewards.

Implemented as follows:
As the “play whatever you want” section starts, your character gets 30 ammo for or ringing bells and a one second recharge between consecutive bell swings. Every time you ring a note, an orb goes away from your character towards the end of the lane that note usually approaches from.

When the 30 seconds are up, you get to try someone else’s composition. If you get it right, you get 5 presents. If the person on the other end gets your tune at least 80% right, you get another 5 presents.

Sounds like fun. I’d mash the keyboard and another player gets to agonize over all 8 notes flying at them super fast and completely random!

I did say that you’d be limited to 30 ammo for bell abilities and that bell rings would have a 1 second cooldown. So while you would be able to make hard tracks to follow, you wouldn’t be able to require multiple bells to be rung within a second of each other.

DocRimpel.5280:

Surely the only purpose is to delay the start of the next round so you can’t farm presents faster than the other activities? Same as the waiting for players takes ages between songs.
Don’t get me wrong I’d love it to be removed tho.

It’s a legacy thing before instruments were in the game if I recall. Since then we’ve had many permanent gemstore and then infinite or breakable choir bells added in other Wintersday Seasons.

It just needs to be cleaned up and shortened in length.

As for farming presents, the Wintersday Wonderland jumping puzzle still gives 10 per completion and takes ~1.5 minutes to do with a 30 minute map length and virtually no downtime/animation graphic between map changes. Even if you don’t practice much, you could easily do every 3 minutes or so after a few hours of practice.

Net net you get ~13 gifts plus occasion daily from the choir bell for 5-6 minutes and 3-4 minutes of downtime to repeat (exit/re-enter and find a suitable map is just as bad) and you get ~30 gifts plus guaranteed daily for Winter Wonderland jumping puzzle in the same amount of time. No contest.

Gerrand.3085:

A better way to solve this would be to turn the pointless “Play whatever you like” segment into the most important part of the event.

Give people 30 seconds to construct a tune and then randomly assign everyones’ tunes to other people and have them attempt the swapped tunes for greater rewards.

Implemented as follows:
As the “play whatever you want” section starts, your character gets 30 ammo for or ringing bells and a one second recharge between consecutive bell swings. Every time you ring a note, an orb goes away from your character towards the end of the lane that note usually approaches from.

When the 30 seconds are up, you get to try someone else’s composition. If you get it right, you get 5 presents. If the person on the other end gets your tune at least 80% right, you get another 5 presents.

You have got to be joking. Seriously. Here, let’s try it out.

SPAMS NOTES

Now you play it.

Artaz.3819:

DocRimpel.5280:

Surely the only purpose is to delay the start of the next round so you can’t farm presents faster than the other activities? Same as the waiting for players takes ages between songs.
Don’t get me wrong I’d love it to be removed tho.

It’s a legacy thing before instruments were in the game if I recall. Since then we’ve had many permanent gemstore and then infinite or breakable choir bells added in other Wintersday Seasons.

It just needs to be cleaned up and shortened in length.

As for farming presents, the Wintersday Wonderland jumping puzzle still gives 10 per completion and takes ~1.5 minutes to do with a 30 minute map length and virtually no downtime/animation graphic between map changes. Even if you don’t practice much, you could easily do every 3 minutes or so after a few hours of practice.

Net net you get ~13 gifts plus occasion daily from the choir bell for 5-6 minutes and 3-4 minutes of downtime to repeat (exit/re-enter and find a suitable map is just as bad) and you get ~30 gifts plus guaranteed daily for Winter Wonderland jumping puzzle in the same amount of time. No contest.

It’s actually 18 gifts for the Bell Choir (1, 1, 3, 3, 5, 5 for the consecutive rounds). 20-30 presents in the same time frame is still better though.

zengara.8301:

kitten , no shame to the grind huh?
Personally hope that A-Net never does something like this, the main reason to do these winter events is for the fun, I am personally not gonna grind, this or the next year. But them having a more open and welcoming event, is never a bad thing in my eyes.

I get that you might waste 4 minutes (or 1), but what is the reason to do the events if not for fun at this point? Rewards is far from good enough to use hours on end on the event

Uhm actually a stack of gifts were selling like 20 gold some time long. Which is a very good rate in an hour. You get 18 gifts per run in 5 minutes. So you can easily get a stack in one hour. Which makes it a good farm for gold.

And, to add to the fact you labeling people “farming gold” is wrong. They are farming drinks for the Winter’s Presence.
I myself am enjoying the Bell Choir more than other content because I am good at it.

And removing the extra “play as you like” section doesnt hinder anything. As you re only bound to either “upper” “lower” or “medium” tunes, you cant even produce a good piece of music alone. There is absolutely no reason for that part to exist.

What would be nice is that anet cuts down the “waiting for players to join” part in half. Each waiting section is about 1 min maybe? And is such a waste or karma boost duration.