Guild Wars 2

This game has many problems right now, and most of them stem from the concept of champion bags. Before champion bags, the community was one of the best in any MMO I’ve ever played (and I’ve played a lot). People would do events just for the sake of doing them, and help others out. Farming was largely a solo affair.

Then champion bags arrived. First there was the Queensdale champion train – a starter zone transformed into a place of hate, greed and anger. Then Edge of the Mists, Boss Blitz, Blix and Coiled Watch, amongst others.

The common denominator here is the champion bag. The funny thing is, the rewards aren’t that great, especially after the monetary nerf – BUT, and here’s the but – there’s a chance of something very valuable, albeit very, very small.

And so people started to chase champ bags as THE endgame. There are players who, if their boasts are to be believed, are gaining thousands of champion bags a week through various exploits.

With the bags comes the toxicity and the endless war between the farmers and the regular players. As a casual MMO, Guild Wars 2 previously attracted a more relaxed playerbase. With no endgame gear-race, you could relax once you hit 80 and just tweak your look, have fun in WvW or – well, do anything you wanted to do.

Why not return to that? If you, ArenaNet, are worried about losing players over a removal of champion bags – I’m sure they’d adapt. And if not, well – I imagine you’ll lose many more over the constant toxicity the bag-farmers bring to EVERY aspect of the game (except sPvP). My former guild is now extinct because everyone had just had enough of the abuse. A friend of mine got so upset she quit not just this game, but video games in general after one player sent her a very threatening message for daring to complete an event that was being “fail farmed”.

Personally, I think that champions don’t need a reward. Sure, give them a random chance to drop random loot like most other monsters in the game, but a bag? It’s not necessary. Most of us wouldn’t miss it if it was gone. As for the farmers – I have no idea about your player numbers, but I’ve seen this pattern before in MMOs. They burn out. If they’re allowed to do the same thing for too long, they just get bored eventually. Why? Because they’re doing it far, far too much. The whole concept of farming is that getting rich is in the farmer’s hands, and they will always push themselves a little bit more. I’m sure that once they sat back in a post-champ bag world they’d realize that actually, there’s plenty of things to enjoy in this wonderful game that don’t require endless farming.

Perhaps champion bags could be replaced with something that didn’t have any impact on the economy. Feel free to brainstorm ideas in this thread!

No, Champion Bags need to stay. Before their introduction, hardly anybody bothered fighting Champs at all. The pitiful event completion reward was hardly worth the time and energy. Not only that, but they are also a large source of the Fine/Masterwork gear people salvage for things like Silk, as well as a moderate supply of things like Cores and Lodestones. Cutting off the Champion Bag source would drive prices for those sky-high again.

What really needs to be addressed is why people feel the need to farm in the first place, and usually, that’s because it’s the quickest and easiest path to getting what they want. (Farm for gold, use that gold to buy the stuff I can’t get.) To reduce the need for gold, you need to increase the supply. So crank up drop rates for everything. Make it so that Veterans always drop a loot bag appropriate to their type. Elites always drop a non-Exotic Champ bag plus guaranteed Fine crafting materials. Champions are now fairly rare, but they always drop an Exotic Champion bag plus a guaranteed Rare crafting material appropriate to their level and type. (Kill a level 80 Champion Spark or Dust Mite, you always get a Charged Lodestone. Watch how fast prices will tumble.)

Now the downside to this? Nothing will be really “rare” anymore, so you can expect players who want exclusivity to complain. Loudly. I’d be happy playing a game where I could get whatever appearance I want fairly easily, but would that make the majority of the playerbase happy? That’s the question ANet needs to consider.

Some people love doing events for their own sake and others prefer them for the rewards. Removing champ bags punishes the second group and, on the whole, does nothing for the first group.

Besides, there aren’t “endless” wars between farmers and non-farmers, there are only a few skirmishes, each of which is quickly ended when ANet renormalizes the events, so that success is more rewarding than failure.

As examples of how the community is still awesome, take a look at how many PUG maps manage to take down Tequatl, at how many people get rez’d (on days without a daily rez) at high-spike events, at how many people help others with dungeons, JPs, etc.

I’ve done the champs dozens of times each and know what to expect from each. They are no longer worth doing unless I’m getting some kind of reward. If they were difficult enough to require some tactics, I might do them for the fun of it. After doing them that many times they cease to be fun for me.
In short, don’t take away what makes them fun for me.

I’m not convinced that tweaking champ bags is going to get the obsessive farmer to step back from what he’s doing and take a breather. I think that as long as there are items in the game that center around getting absurd amounts of currency to acquire them, people are going to obsess over how much currency they have and how fast they can get it.

Legendaries, ascended items, BL weapons, etc… there’s a laundry list of stupid expensive stuff that can get people in the obsessive-currency-farming mindset.

But it’s never as simple as “making acquisition easier” or “making acquisition through some kind of hoop instead of currency” because both run the risk of leaving you with a playerbase that gets everything too fast and then feels like there is nothing left to do.

Gear acquisition is a kind of content, let’s face it. And the problem with it is that it’s not only incredibly easy to treat it as a fundamental part of an entertaining MMO, but it’s also a race track with a finish line. Unlike some forms of gameplay, where the goalposts are set by competition and can move dynamically (e.g. structured PvP, dungeon speed clears, etc.) gear acquisition has a clear beginning and end.

And I can say from experience that when someone becomes singularly focused on gear acquisition as the ultimate goal, it’s only a matter of time until he either burns out or hits the finish line and leaves the track. Honestly, MMOs in general need to rethink the enabling of a mindset that has such a clear finish line.

Sorry but I also disagree with removing champ bags as a solution. IMO the main problem is stemming from event design how in some cases you are rewarded more for failing an event than for completing it. Resolving that would be much better.

Before champ bags people farmed events on cursed shore and got angry at anyone who interfered and you know, tried to do the event.

It’s not the champ bags that are causing the problem. If they are taken out then the farmers and the people trying to stop the farming will move to a different battlefield. The answer is to adjust how the events are rewarded, not remove the rewards.

Sube Dai.8496:

Before champ bags people farmed events on cursed shore and got angry at anyone who interfered and you know, tried to do the event.

Which is, hmm, pretty much what goes on at Coiled Watch.

. . . I don’t think the problem is with the bags.

I don’t think that champion bags are any problem. I mean you can farm a lot more gold by doing events in Cursed Shore and sometimes kill champs. And why would they remove those bags if they aren’t more rewardable than going events like melandru pre or arah defense where you won’t meet single champion. And toxicity becomes from one thing – there are only 2 maps where you can farm champs and most players would like to do that in most efficient way.

Anyway the only problem is that most ppl stay all day long in cursed shore or frostgorge sound because this maps give an opportunity to get some gold. The solution would be making more interesting and rewardable events in low lvl maps when you hit lvl 80. It’s just sad that this maps feels like “only to lvl up” and then they are only full when some world boss spawns. If there were good oportunities to farm on every single map and do events or champs while getting like 5-10 gold /hour ppl wouldn’t stick to one train and flame all day on those who wanna do it in other way, because they will have an opportunity to change map and do something else.

Remove Champion Bags!_I wonder if removing a reward is the answer for solving the age old problem, some people… are A’kittens’. And in an age where these people feel there are no ramifications for inappropriate and abusive behavior, punishing the mass for the offense of the very few seems to be a bit of overkill to me.

Though I agree with the OP that the egregious behavior of the small minded is surely unacceptable, throwing out the baby with the bathwater, may not be the best solution.

I question:

My former guild is now extinct because everyone had just had enough of the abuse. A friend of mine got so upset she quit not just this game, but video games in general after one player sent her a very threatening message for daring to complete an event that was being “fail farmed”.

Are Champion Bags really the reason why the guild is now extinct? Really?

If a friend quit the game because they got a threatening message… /report, /block, continue.

It is hard to believe that the fairer sex is so fragile as to be unable to tolerate a modicum of stupidity and just quit. Though surely for some, quitting is an option, others tend to take onus for ones situations and deal with the issues appropriately as an alternative to giving up. Pretty is truly, not helpless.

So I reiterate, are the champion bags really the issue here?

As much as I dislike the failtrain exploiters camping down on events and trying to lay claim to it, taking away Champ Bags is not the answer.

There are legitimate ways to farm within game and 99% of the timethose champ trains and farm spots are pretty well received by all, because they are in the right level maps allowing players to share common goals.
Event exploits are where the issues lay and that’s for ANET to sort out the mess with rewarding failure better than success.

What I would suggest is that events keep the ability to scale and spawn champs that drop loot, that keeps the event relatively healthy for all, but there needs to be a loot lock.. i.e Fred completes Coil, get all the nice loot from the champs etc plus end of event karma, coin and whatever else they give and moves on – event goes onto its normal timer.
Now Birt goes to Coil get all that phat loot from the scaled up champs but decides to fail it and rerun it.. no problem but this time the scaling is reduced, less phat loot .. atfer 3 maybe 5 runs there is nothing but trash loot dropping and the best you can do is complete for normal reward. However the event now becomes loot locked to your account for 1hr.

I ignore the trains. I kill my enemies If I want to kill them and I’m not going to sit around and wait for people. I tend not to try to leech in event being train-ed as well, as I mostly run solo and I will not get enough dmg up.

And yes I can solo champions. And not all of them but most are ok. I sometimes do the events in cursed shore becasue i need the dragonite, but due to the trains temples are nearly always done.

The fact people are willing to do the events is nice. The fact people do not respect eachother in a game, shows some people have no life, and no courtesy.

For 3 silver (mostly lost in travels) and a chance of a rare or exotic people are willing to destroy the fun of others. They will drain the world of players, and therefore remove all people who can gloat at things they have bought witch their farm. So in the end it rewally doesn’t matter to farm if you are not nice to people because you might farm yourself your legendary, but if there’s noone to see it, well than it was just a waist of time.

I just go on solo, I like to play the game. I do not care if you see what I earned. I do not skin my characters to perfection. I saw all in over 2 yrs now. and I saw the start, the bad drops, the nerfs to bad drops, the nerfs to champions, the nerf of dungeons, the boost for dungeons, all continues nerfs for dungeons,the nerfs to trains, the nerfs for characters, and now the small boost for characters a few weeks ago….

The thing I actually find most funny is that people are actually proud of farming 15,50 or 100 bags. When playing with 20+ people…. It seems as pointless as killing a single roamer in wvw with the zerg…

I know there are actual farming guilds that have no other ideas then running around area’s just farming all champs… I run dungeons if I want to and the dungeons paid for most of the armors gear and trinkets of 14 characters, as well as secondary armors, ascended weapons, and 2 legendaries…

But in the end it’s never about farming or champion bags. Farming is a way of playing , I will respect farmers, as long as they respect me doing my own things in Tyria. And ythat could mean I kill a champ solo while they’re running a train.
I’ve been scolded and threatened before, and I just say I couldn’t care. But I’ve seen a lot now. I know I have seen commanders post to the farm zerg they should report other players for killing -their- champion….

If there is no respect, I wil report people. That’s why there is a /report. It’s not to promote farming. And I only report people actually making threats and posting abuse.

And if you get bothered while running in tyrioa you should do so as well.

Wow, really?

Lets take away rewards instead of increase them, that will keep people playing this game xD Worst idea ever. This has to be a troll lol.

These cry for nerf threads are what destroys games if devs listen to the sob stories from players on the forums. I’ve been gaming since 1999 and I can name 10 big MMOs that took a kitten after developers listened to the whiny vocal minority on the forums. In interviews for a game site I was part of back in the day, I learned hind site is a mofo. Raph Koster said it best “you dance with the ones who brought ya”. I hope anet is smarter than this.

@Vanive

If you read it carfefully the problem is not the champion bags, but the fact the farmers have been mean to others not doing the champ train, in other words for killing “their” champs.

The reactions of trying to get bags banned is just a reaction to this. The issue isn’t the champion bags, but people not willing to share an MMO with others…. And being mean and rude to other players.

The fact you do not see this and didn’t read the OP’s thread seems to show you are only here for the bags as well… Just think about it.

I don`t care about the champ bags (they didn`t offer me much value so far, except one exotic) as their implementation is not the way I hoped they would be (aka offering special weapons to a certain group of enemies, instead of just being a straight way to a certain group of items, aka champion weapons).

So far, not very lucky, but i still like the idea and I hope they will be improved to give people an insentive to not just farm the most lucrative events, but go around the world and seek out specific enemies to farm and subsequently be unfocused

Zaxares.5419:

What really needs to be addressed is why people feel the need to farm in the first place, and usually, that’s because it’s the quickest and easiest path to getting what they want. (Farm for gold, use that gold to buy the stuff I can’t get.) To reduce the need for gold, you need to increase the supply. So crank up drop rates for everything. Make it so that Veterans always drop a loot bag appropriate to their type. Elites always drop a non-Exotic Champ bag plus guaranteed Fine crafting materials. Champions are now fairly rare, but they always drop an Exotic Champion bag plus a guaranteed Rare crafting material appropriate to their level and type. (Kill a level 80 Champion Spark or Dust Mite, you always get a Charged Lodestone. Watch how fast prices will tumble.)

This. This is exactly why the reward system in this game is a complete failure. The more braindead/afkable content is, the greater loot rewards it gives (if you also factor in TIME) Anet devs really fotgot to add TIME in their reward equations, which is maybe the most important factor, difficulty is only a minor factor.

I don’t like the idea of adding more rewards to all veteran+ mobs though. But, adding more rewards to CERTAIN mobs and activities would help. Adding a rare crafting material on all Champions won’t help, adding lots and lots of them at the final boss of Arah P4 would help. Adding extra loot on all mobs at Fractals level 50 would also help.

They can keep their farm system as it is now, reducing rewards (by remove champ bags) is NOT a solution. Adding substantial more rewards to the harder content in the game is the best solution. Right now content difficulty plays absolutely no role in the rewards you get, which is terrible in every way.

Oh and they need to someday increase tPVP rewards, I mean it IS the only part of the game that has some sort of challenge (getting to the top 1000 players on the leaderboards for example) and yet the rewards there are beyond pathetic, following a Frostgorge or Dry Top champ train is infinite times more rewarding.

If you remove champ bags, you have to up the rewards for finishing the events. Rewards are rewards. If farmers are getting rewarded for finishing events and people want to finish events, everyone goes home a winner.

The disconnect exists because farming champions is more profitable than finishing the event. Just make finishing the events more profitable than farming bags.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

@Vanive

If you read it carfefully the problem is not the champion bags, but the fact the farmers have been mean to others not doing the champ train, in other words for killing “their” champs.

The reactions of trying to get bags banned is just a reaction to this. The issue isn’t the champion bags, but people not willing to share an MMO with others…. And being mean and rude to other players.

The fact you do not see this and didn’t read the OP’s thread seems to show you are only here for the bags as well… Just think about it.

Which points more to the problem not being the bags themselves but the structuring making the loot desirable enough to draw the attitude out for people “spoiling the game for others”. In either direction.

It should be simple – a few tweaks come to mind. Applied only, of course, to DEs where Champions can be spawned en masse instead of being the sole goal of the event.

1a. Event-spawned Champions reward bags on success only. Add a cap so you can only get ## bags per Event. Bags do not drop but are now part of the reward structure.

1b. Remove Champion reward bags as loot in events. Remove the ability to resurrect all but X NPCs during an event, and if all die then auto-fail. NPCs still standing at the event have a dialogue option to hand over a Champion Bag.

2. Replace Champion spawns from upscaled Events with more Elites instead. No champs, no bags, and adding more elites can make the event harder and gently nudge people not to overcrowd events lest they become . . . difficult.

3. Remove Champion loot from event-spawned Champions only.

Guild Wars 2 is one of the least rewarding MMO’s I have played, removing bags entirely is not the way to go.

I say Arena Net should add the bags as reward to the level of participation for event completion rather than champion drops. Champions should give slightly better reward than veterans/elite plus extra silver to make the effort of defeating them worth while but the good stuff comes with the gold event completion. People will not actively seek to fail events when they know the reward only given as part of it’s completion, failure grants zero to one bags. Yes people would still farm, but it would be in the right spirit of cooperation as the game was originally designed for.

Aedelric.1287:

Guild Wars 2 is one of the least rewarding MMO’s I have played, removing bags entirely is not the way to go.

I say Arena Net should add the bags as reward to the level of participation for event completion rather than champion drops. Champions should give slightly better reward than veterans/elite plus extra silver to make the effort of defeating them worth while but the good stuff comes with the gold event completion. People will not actively seek to fail events when they know the reward only given as part of it’s completion, failure grants zero to one bags. Yes people would still farm, but it would be in the right spirit of cooperation as the game was originally designed for.

Not to mention, if they put the champion lootbags as event completion rewards players won’t “miss” bags if some champs die way too quickly. Sometimes you don’t even get any rewards, if the number of people attacking a champ reaches abnormal levels.

Adding champ bags to event completion rewards is a win-win

The problem with champion bags is that they draw a small part of the population, named farmers, to abuse event mecanics and fail them on purpose to increase loot rate.

That may be fine if there was not the second part of this problem: by doing so, these people actually block some parts of the game for other players and they feel so entitled to doing so that they actually massively abuse verbally people that need to have the event completed normally (and ask for it).

I have been subject to such harrasment recently when I had to complete the coilwatch event to get some achievment. Not only some people have very harsh words, but the whole group also tries to grief players trying to play the game normally.

In my example, I politely said I needed to complete the event, had try several maps and all were farmed. I spoke about the need to share the game between players with various goals. But farmers did not want to hear anything and started insulting me, saying I was a troll, telling others to report me, have the event has hard as possible to force it to fail, said I was the griefer since I wanted the event won.
This is completely absurd. Since I know how to play the game and is very well geared, I turned on my commander tag and, along with 2-3 other players also wanting the event won and one (and actually only one) of the farmers that understood the problem (sad there was only one smart guy in about 50 people), I was able to complete the event.
Afterward, some farmers asked others to all join then following event chain to have it has hard as possible but to not hit ennemies, intending to fail the event chain in order to actually grief the few players that need the event completed (which is, I remind you all, the way the game is actually meant to be played).

This situation is extraordinarily toxic, disguting, and can turn away many players from the game. People that want to escape the game difficulty by farming simple events that earn fast and cheap gold should not feel entitled to anything.

Event difficulty scaling up, but not reward !!
Here is, in my opinion, the real problem with champions bags. Champion bags are fine by themselves and nice addition to REAL champions.

When they are many people doing an event, that event scales up to keep the difficulty roughly the same whatever the number of attended is. Events could scale by increasing the number of ennemies, or they strengh/thoughness. They actually do a bit of each, which eventually results in champions appearing, that are not normally part of the event.
And these champions also loot bags. This is a problem as it means that events become more rewarding as the number of attendents increase. The difficulty should scale according to the numbers, so that it remains roughly the same, but the reward should not. Otherwise it creates this toxic zerg farming, event failing mentality.

How to simply solve the toxig event zerg farming mentality
Therefore, the most simple solution to an actually complex problem should be this:
- ennemies that are actually meant by Anet as champions keep their champion bag
- normal ennemies that spawn from events and are promoted to champion status due to event scaling should never have any specific loot, especially champion bags. They should actually only loot like any basic event ennemy.

Doing so would solve the problem across the board at once instead of requiring ANet to nerf events one after another as zerg farmers start to exploit them

There is one problem with this game that has been around for 2 years and its the rewards are bad. Champ bags helped them feel a little better taking them away would do more harm than good. The event system makes this worse because not every event is equal.

So here is the question: (lets say each event takes 20 mins)
event A does not scale to spawn champs
event B does spawn champs
Which one is more likely to be done and why?
My answer is event B and its because event A will give you a 1 or 2 silver(if lucky) and some xp, karma and whatever items mobs drop. Event B will give you the same and a champ bag which can have quite a few things inside so even 1 champ bag makes a large difference in what you get.

My solution would never happen but it would be to increase all rewards by a large amount and get rid of gold to gems. But I’m sure anet makes a decent amount on gem sales for gems to gold and the player base would not stand for it.

So all in all about the only thing that can be done is to make more events appealing and success at the events the better choice. The solution is not to nerf rewards any further than they already have been because that will cause more people to stop playing.

Generally this game was buils so an event would trigger another, in the living world, These chains were vey important as they would trigger Temples and such. This has been largely destroyed by the megaserver system. If you did your templeu used to b able to change servers (max 2 times /day) and redo it, on all your characters if you wanted to. Nowadays with the megaserver, you just map out and map into another to see if events are done. This allows for far more farming.

The chains of the living world in Orr serve no other purpose then just doing events,at present. The events if lost spawn a new event a couple of seconds later which aloows for more farming. Correct use of winning or losing can be a big difference in loot. poeple can farm hundreds of Heavy moldy bags and numerours champion boxes just by finding a couple of spots and just walking back and forth a short distance. Maybe a fail on these misions should just RESET the whole chain. making the run from fort trinity to the gates of Arah viable again, taking into account ALL temples. Making a fail a waste of effort. keeping Arah locked and al statues active once more… Maybe a buff should be aplied to spawns in the not liberated area’s of Orr ( say 50% to critters in arah and 25% o crittersin malcjhors leap dropping 25% when straits of devastaion has been completed and another 25 when malchors leap has been completed, and maybe a magic find buff after all events ahev been done for 1 hour after whitch the events/ bosses and statues respawn.

This will make sure people keep the events on track, and make farming the route more interesting. But in the end it will not stop players from being mean, and IMHO all ingame hate due to farming should be monitored. But it has been here since the corpse farming in the first few months of the game… (It was my first event I was flamed for as I saw the corpses should be burned, but wasn’t aware of people farming the grubs… I was shocked about the whisper’s i received at that time. I did farm there but found being galant and inviting people into group served my interest at the time more then just doing to them what I went through that time. People actually returned, The grub farm has long been nerfed, and I make money by doing dungeons rather then running around like a headless chicken now. )

Running around endlessly in circles to get what I want in a game…… Too many fun things in RL to do rather then that. Watch Youtube or Netflix is more entertaining. Doing large events for no reward? I could do large events in other games and get lots of reward. Why play this game?

warduke.1780:

This game has many problems right now, and most of them stem from the concept of champion bags. Before champion bags, the community was one of the best in any MMO I’ve ever played (and I’ve played a lot). People would do events just for the sake of doing them, and help others out. Farming was largely a solo affair.

Zerg farming has been in this game almost from the very beginning (original Plinx, temple events etc). Champ bags only redirected it a bit, but didn’t introduce or change the general idea behind it.

warduke.1780:

Personally, I think that champions don’t need a reward.

Then you likely don’t remember the times when nobody bothered to attack champions, because it was lot of effort for no gain. Remember, champ bags were introduced, because community loudly demanded for champ drops to be worth something. Their introduction was a good thing then, and i’d rather not see this change being turned back.
Just as i’d rather not see any further nerfs to drops in this game, they are bad as it is already.

How about let Champions be Champions roaming somewhere on solitude and NOT let them appear by scaled up events and achievements ? Problem solved

Champion bags are fine, they just need to govern where and when they drop a little bit better.

They have the tool, they have an ability to flag a Champion as not having a bag, yet still spawn it to provide extra challenge when required. We see it at Claw.

Now, if the live team that’s been in place after, say, the first 14 months of the game doesn’t know how to do that, no documentation or code comments, well that’s a whole other issue.

notebene.3190:

Champion bags are fine, they just need to govern where and when they drop a little bit better.

They have the tool, they have an ability to flag a Champion as not having a bag, yet still spawn it to provide extra challenge when required. We see it at Claw.

Now, if the live team that’s been in place after, say, the first 14 months of the game doesn’t know how to do that, no documentation or code comments, well that’s a whole other issue.

They should know…champs during Tequatl for instance do not drop champ bags..they do however count towards monthly champ kills

Aedelric.1287:

Guild Wars 2 is one of the least rewarding MMO’s I have played, removing bags entirely is not the way to go.

I say Arena Net should add the bags as reward to the level of participation for event completion rather than champion drops. Champions should give slightly better reward than veterans/elite plus extra silver to make the effort of defeating them worth while but the good stuff comes with the gold event completion. People will not actively seek to fail events when they know the reward only given as part of it’s completion, failure grants zero to one bags. Yes people would still farm, but it would be in the right spirit of cooperation as the game was originally designed for.

Though I agree removing champ bags is not the way to go.. reward is not all about phat loots.. GW2 actually passes as a pretty rewarding game to me (bugs and performance issues aside),I find it fun, attractive to the eye, I can farm the champ trains when I want (no interest in exploiting events), I can hit a dungeon if I am desperate, I can run PS or I can PvP if my arm is twisted enuff, if not I have EoTM / WvW for a short time karma farm, play the TP game or craft stuff.. there is always things for me to do.. heck even Living Story this time round has been a one up on season 2 imo and PvE has always been fun even if many of the events have a short shelf life across a lot of the maps.

There in lies a big issue when considering removing champ bags.. unless ANET can fix the risk/reward/time invested issues then this kind of toxic farming will continue to grow move on and grow some more elsewhere.. pretty soon the Devs become nothing more than fire fighters week in week out rushing patches to fix flawed events that are targeted for exploiting on a grand scale.

This game has some glaringly obvious issues at the moment, which could use more immediate attention rather than having to keep jumping to patch events like this and Blix so they need to start considering a blanket fix of the reward structure to ensure that purposely failing event is never a better reward than completing them.

Failure, whether by circumstance or on purpose must have consequences to the event, the chain, the players tagged into it maybe even the map itself. This may well have a positive impact on both the event and the surrounding Openworld making the map more interlinked and interesting, thus improving a maps replay value as long as the risk/reward is appropriately structured /scaleable in order to keep as many interested as possible.
If that isn’t enuff to qualm the greed and attitude of those who want nothing more than to exploit the events repeatedly, then the EXIT door is always an option or if they continually attempt to do repeat their actions, then stronger account action has to be looked at by ANET.

I gotta agree with everyone else here – leave the champion bags.

ArenaNet needs to embrace farming on some level. If they don’t want certain areas farmed, they should create an area where people can farm in peace.

The only places where I’m against farming would be where it disrupts normal PvE activities.

JCROY.5730:

How about let Champions be Champions roaming somewhere on solitude and NOT let them appear by scaled up events and achievements ? Problem solved

We have that in abundance.. but apparently that’s not enough for some cos they have to have everything yesterday and greed is their driving force.

darkdomino.9578:

I gotta agree with everyone else here – leave the champion bags.

ArenaNet needs to embrace farming on some level. If they don’t want certain areas farmed, they should create an area where people can farm in peace.

The only places where I’m against farming would be where it disrupts normal PvE activities.

They already have a range of farming areas in game which are always busy and run without any issues. Add to that there is a dedicated map to farm to your hearts content – - its called Edge of the Mists

Problem we have is some players are greedy and don’t actually want to do anything in game except sit on a hump and hit the auto attack then when the time is right let the event purposely fail to exploit the reset mechanics.. that kind of farming isn’t healthy for the game or the community within it.. as were seeing again and again.. hence why all these threads appear.
These player wont be happy until the loot is nerfed hard including the legitimate champ farms that already exist.

JCROY.5730:

How about let Champions be Champions roaming somewhere on solitude and NOT let them appear by scaled up events and achievements ? Problem solved

This is why champ bags were introduced in the first place.

Previously instead of spawning champs, events spawned 10-20 regular mobs. those 10-20 regular mobs gave 10-20 loot rolls that people wanted. Before champ bags if an event spawned a champ players just left. There was no reason to waste time on events that spawned champs when they could get much better loot much faster on other events. In order to get players to kill champs and not ignore the events, they introduced champ bags.

The problem is the terrible reward structure in this game. The best way to get every item in the game is the same, grind for it.

Sorry, but I don’t think yet another nerf is going to solve anything. As an analyst/software developer with 16+ years experience, I consider this a poor excuse for not re-coding correctly. There’s been enough nerfs to last quite awhile. Time to rethink that theory. We all enjoy this game and want to continue playing in a fun environment. I’ve been thinking about this for a bit and had a thought. Can we as a community find a viable solution in the hope that the overlords @ Anet find it acceptable and adopt our collective resolution

Problem: As many know, the Meta Event in question has some issues. Mainly the ‘farmers’ have found out that by failing one of the sub events, at some point in the event chain, they can maximize their profitability. This can cause serious issues for adventurers and other players, who seek to complete the event chain for valid game/story related reasons. I will state publically that I do farm from time to time. I have nothing against the practice. I think it’s a part of most of these style games. It should be allowed to continue, but NEVER at the cost to another player. All players have the right to play the game the way they wish. ( I read that somewhere once ). Perhaps a bit Utopian, but let us see if we can’t find a solution to this before the overlords nerf this to death and we all suffer for it.

In the Wiki I notice that they make mention of a ‘Svanir Treasure’ at the end of the final event. As someone who’s completed the event more than a few times. I’m not familiar with any special treasure chest. I’ve gotten a pittance from the Shamans, but never saw some glorious treasure like when you take out SB per say. Please don’t tell me I missed it more than once ? The wiki doesn’t seem to have any detail on this. So I’m assuming I’m not the only one who’s not seen it. Or maybe it’s not worth mention. ( That might be something that needs a tweaking )

Elements: There are 5 sub events in the chain. Each has its own rewards, scalability & time constraints. These are the parts that we have to work with. So I’d like to start off with the ‘Time’ part of the equation. Although the wiki makes no mention of this, I’ve noticed that some of the sub events have a time constraints attached. Basically we’ve got x number of minutes to complete the event or it fails. Should an event fail, then the global Meta Event’s time begins anew. This in lies the current root of the problem. Fail event #2 and event #1 will restart quite soon after. Rinse & repeat to maximize the Champion spawns in a period of time.

Proposal: What if all 5 Events had a time constraint & the global Meta event had a time constraint that was essentially a SUM() of the sub event timers. The only way to shorten the restart time of the Meta, would be to complete the entire cycle. Theoretically, there would be no point to failing in order to get that quick restart. I have seen that throughout the entire chain Champions spawn during each event. So there will never be a shortage of prime targets. One can hopefully assume that the farmers will be content to continue the chain since there would be a steady supply of loot. The rest of the community will be able to complete their 1 time only run through the chain.

One drawback I see to this is, should at some point, the chain be broken because the available players failed it for some ‘Unplanned’ reason. There would be a long wait to get that 2nd shot at it. Usually I want my revenge against the machine. But overall, is this a major deterrent to the proposed theory? Is this a willing price/compromise to pay for harmony in the zone? If there was a 5 minute timer from full event completion to restart, this would minimize the wait time.

As for rewards, farmers farm for profit ( duh ). The above mentioned Final treasure would need to be worth something. If you can toast SB with a level 80 toon in a low level zone and get 0-3 level 80 Rare items. ( Lately, this seems to be nerfed a bit, but that’s a rant for another thread ). Plus there is the once per day guarantee of 1 level 80 Rare. You would think that a full event chain in a high end zone should offer something worth the effort. I am NOT talking ‘Precursor’ here. I’m not looking for mega loot of any kind. But there needs to be something worth 30-40 minutes of your time. Yes, the fun of the mass ensemble has some level of entertainment over the usual solo play. But that doesn’t particularly satisfy all needs. Balancing reward to make it worth the effort, but not make a player rich with repetitive event completion is part of this exercise.

The final part I’ve mentioned is Scalability. The number of Champs, Vets, Elites etc based on the size of the player base involved. From my perspective I’ve seen nothing wrong with it. The spawns don’t at any point look to completely overpower the players. Some might say that it’s a bit too easy. To each his own and I doubt that Anet can balance this much better. But that is why we’re discussing this. Perhaps others might see a way to make it more of a challenge. But that might be ok when the zerg is present, but when there’s only a few players failure might be more prevalent. I had noticed in the final event in the chain that Commanders who knew the event were able to time the demise of the Shaman in order to maximize the Champions that would come in. In the future, once the extra Champion spawns have concluded, the event can be complete thus resetting the overall timer.

Can we collectively find a solution to this???

Champion bags are not the common denominator simply due to the fact that this issue predates them. The common denominator in the farming equation is people. Until people can learn to actual act in a respectable manner (and some do, I’m not saying the issue is with all people here) and understand that this is a multiplayer game where they have to share, the issue at hand simply isn’t going to improve.

No

From The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
“This planet has, or had, a problem which was this: Most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper… which is odd, because on the whole, it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy… "

Substitute ‘people at event’ for planet and ‘champ bags’ for small green pieces of paper.

It’s not the champ bags that are the problem, it’s the people’s reactions to the events rewards and how they get them. Any time people are working towards a reward and get stopped by someone else, this behavior will pop up. It’s human nature. The answer isn’t to remove the reward but to rework how people get them.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

No

No as an answer is a clear answer, but not adding anything to the discussion, why not?

I don’t think champion loot bags should be removed, you just shouldn’t get them if the event associated with the boss fails. Players should NEVER be rewarded more for losing than for winning. That’s just bad design. And this should ESPECIALLY never happen when that event is required to complete the Living Story.

The issue has never been the Champ Bags, but the immature, greedy players that pursue them with a single minded zeal that is fully unwarranted….

If you ignore those players and continue on your way (not concerning yourself with those that make the pursuit of a precursor or other single minded goal their sole reason for playing this game), your experience will be much better.

Making outlandish suggestions like this one (remove Champ Bats) seems to be aimed at “fixing” something that cannot be fixed (humans ability to be inhumane to each other). Quit concerning yourself with trying to police the the nasty map chat grievers and punks and just play the game.

Brother Grimm.5176:

The issue has never been the Champ Bags, but the immature, greedy players that pursue them with a single minded zeal that is fully unwarranted….

If you ignore those players and continue on your way (not concerning yourself with those that make the pursuit of a precursor or other single minded goal their sole reason for playing this game), your experience will be much better.

Making outlandish suggestions like this one (remove Champ Bats) seems to be aimed at “fixing” something that cannot be fixed (humans ability to be inhumane to each other). Quit concerning yourself with trying to police the the nasty map chat grievers and punks and just play the game.

Except that these people prevent (or try to) us from just playing the game. And while experienced player can circumvent them, new players only suffer from them as they don’t have enough experience to properly react.

On a side note: yes, coilfang nerfed. So happy to read this. Maybe one day zerg farmers will finaly understand they need to share the game.

Gilgalas.7860:

Except that these people prevent (or try to) us from just playing the game.

Which people? If you haven’t noticed, anytime the problem pops up, it comes from both sides of the dispute.

no! terrible idea, OP
no one bothered with champs or events that spawned them before the bags were introduced……and we really don’t need to nerf rewards in this game.

all Anet has to do is not tie PS or LS advancement to open world events that spawn champs.

warduke.1780:

snip

I don’t think you understand the ways to make gold are dwindling down to a small handful of methods, this game feels like much more stick beatings complete with insulting splinters than carrot offerings— this coming from a peaceful, casual farmer.

Crying nerf will not solve the situation, as imo there’s too much reward nerf already.

Also, no one can control or predict an individual’s attitude, and that’s the sad part about the whole thing. Bad tempered, immature farmers and haughty outraged players who feel belittled by said bad farmers are the ones making a caustic scene— there’s the real “endless wars” you’re spouting off about.

If you need to threaten/tell someone to die over a game, or start an unnecessary holy nerfing crusade without offering a thoughtful solution, maybe you should take a really good break from playing… but that’s just my opinion.

Labjax.2465

I think that as long as there are items in the game that center around getting absurd amounts of currency to acquire them, people are going to obsess over how much currency they have and how fast they can get it.

Legendaries, ascended items, BL weapons, etc… there’s a laundry list of stupid expensive stuff that can get people in the obsessive-currency-farming mindset.

This, pretty much.

warduke.1780:

This game has many problems right now, and most of them stem from the concept of champion bags. Before champion bags, the community was one of the best in any MMO I’ve ever played (and I’ve played a lot). People would do events just for the sake of doing them, and help others out. Farming was largely a solo affair.

Then champion bags arrived. First there was the Queensdale champion train – a starter zone transformed into a place of hate, greed and anger. Then Edge of the Mists, Boss Blitz, Blix and Coiled Watch, amongst others.

The common denominator here is the champion bag. The funny thing is, the rewards aren’t that great, especially after the monetary nerf – BUT, and here’s the but – there’s a chance of something very valuable, albeit very, very small.

And so people started to chase champ bags as THE endgame. There are players who, if their boasts are to be believed, are gaining thousands of champion bags a week through various exploits.

With the bags comes the toxicity and the endless war between the farmers and the regular players. As a casual MMO, Guild Wars 2 previously attracted a more relaxed playerbase. With no endgame gear-race, you could relax once you hit 80 and just tweak your look, have fun in WvW or – well, do anything you wanted to do.

Why not return to that? If you, ArenaNet, are worried about losing players over a removal of champion bags – I’m sure they’d adapt. And if not, well – I imagine you’ll lose many more over the constant toxicity the bag-farmers bring to EVERY aspect of the game (except sPvP). My former guild is now extinct because everyone had just had enough of the abuse. A friend of mine got so upset she quit not just this game, but video games in general after one player sent her a very threatening message for daring to complete an event that was being “fail farmed”.

Personally, I think that champions don’t need a reward. Sure, give them a random chance to drop random loot like most other monsters in the game, but a bag? It’s not necessary. Most of us wouldn’t miss it if it was gone. As for the farmers – I have no idea about your player numbers, but I’ve seen this pattern before in MMOs. They burn out. If they’re allowed to do the same thing for too long, they just get bored eventually. Why? Because they’re doing it far, far too much. The whole concept of farming is that getting rich is in the farmer’s hands, and they will always push themselves a little bit more. I’m sure that once they sat back in a post-champ bag world they’d realize that actually, there’s plenty of things to enjoy in this wonderful game that don’t require endless farming.

Perhaps champion bags could be replaced with something that didn’t have any impact on the economy. Feel free to brainstorm ideas in this thread!

Oh, so remove the last thing we have to farm? Then there would be even more people farming events, and then people who aren’t farming would get even more angry, and there would be even more toxicity from both sides. Removing farming is the problem, not the solution.

We don’t have many options to make money in the first place. A lot of people will say dungeons, but they even nerfed that! The solution is to add new farming methods that do not get in the way of other people’s gameplay.

Ive made the recommendation before -

They should remove champion bags and replace them with “group event bags.” They should then make sure every champion in the game is associated with a dynamic event (most already are – this wouldnt take much effort). The big difference would be that the bags would only be available upon successful completion of an event.

In essence, turn the champion farms into event farms (Successful events only).

Perhaps: ANet removes champ bags from champs that are not central to an event.

Well it’s another way to say: “Remove champ bags from extra lesser champions in events”

But then again, a better identification of “Prime Champion” and “Lesser Champion” would be nice to have.

Answer: No. Removing champion loot bags without an adequate replacement for guaranteed loot from them will make things worse.