Guild Wars 2

The last few days my girlfriend and I have made use of the dragon timers for the first time in order to get some of the achievements we were missing.

I never realized until this point how many people camp the dragons for loot.

Standing there for 20 minutes gave me time to ponder this, and in the end I found it very sad. The reason is that you have these epic dragons in the world, but they are reduced to tasks or loot machines.

In my eyes a dragon landing in the role should be an epic event. It should be something that causes word to ripple throughout Tyria, and players to run from all over to experience. Bringing down a dragon should be something that causes everyone to cheer and talk a out for days. And the loot, the sweet loot that should accompany a dragon kill should be sought after and revered.

I understand that ANet wants to give everyone a chance to participate in this content, but these clockwork events are making the game stale.

Take the Maw for example. Does anyone even care about that event? All it takes is a, “Maws up” in map chat and people run the same predictable paths, line up in the same predictable places, and do what they do every day.

I think ANet meets to consider adding some real dynamic content. Content that isn’t on a timer, or in the same place every time. Imagine what would happen if a dragon showed up randomly one day in Queensdale. First, people would be confused and shocked. Second, the word would fly across the worlds so fast it would be amazing to watch.

As more players rushed to participate in the battle, it would become more, and more epic. In the end, IF the dragon was beaten, it would be talked about for days.

I look forward to a day when dragons aren’t on timers.

I’m a Gw2 player and I approve this message.

Gotta agree with this. I have dragontimer up on a tab and when it comes near, I’ll just post a message in guild chat saying “tecuatl up?” someone goes yes, I teleport to the waypoint, run up hopefully in time to get damage through, do a bit of autoattacking and then get myself some (pointless, as I’m 80) XP, a few silver and mostly junk loot with a rare or possibly two.

The dragons themselves are epic, but it’s like the farming at Penitent Waypoint in Orr, it takes a giant dump on my immersion when people just go round farming events (or in this case a bugged one) like this, even if I do it with bosses myself because otherwise I’ll be left just taking loot from trash mobs.

Just something to remember – the “dragons” you have on that timer, aren’t the actual Elder Dragons; just their lieutenants. When we ACTUALLY have a real Elder Dragon to fight on the world map, I think you’re exactly spot on – it should pop outta nowhere in some map you would expect! That would be awesome and amazing, definitely.

However, I do agree with you – I wish the three dragons’ lieutenants’ fights were more exciting and epic, and not on a timer…but then people would complain about never getting to see them, or whatever =/

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

Bringing down a dragon should be something that causes everyone to cheer and talk a out for days. And the loot, the sweet loot that should accompany a dragon kill should be sought after and revered.

Content that isn’t on a timer, or in the same place every time. Imagine what would happen if a dragon showed up randomly one day in Queensdale. First, people would be confused and shocked. Second, the word would fly across the worlds so fast it would be amazing to watch.

As more players rushed to participate in the battle, it would become more, and more epic. In the end, IF the dragon was beaten, it would be talked about for days.

I look forward to a day when dragons aren’t on timers.

Yes! Like (don’t kill me for saying this) SKYRIM! I’d be in a town and BAM DRAGON ATTACK! It was so EPIC because I could be on top of a mountain, in a town, in the ocean, in a cave, and a dragon would fly by and attack. It kept me on my toes, and made me watch the sky. Heck I was actually scared for the first few hours I played the game.

I kept nervously watching the sky while riding my horse around to do quests. I was fighting off a pack of wolves, and then I heard it. SWOOSH. Fire rained down causing everything to immediately glow hot red and burn. A deafening roar filled the valley. The fierce wolves I had been fighting moments ago were now singed, running away yelping pathetically in terror. I turned around and before me stood a huge dragon staring me down with intense hatred. He opened his massive jaw, full of jagged pointy teeth, and chomped down on my character. That dragon lifted my poor guy up like a cat with a dead lizard. He bit down a few times, making sure my guy’s spine was good and broken, tossed me aside, and flew away. Game over. Yeah, I was pretty jumpy while playing that game.

Have dragons spawn randomly 3 times a week. Fights take half an hour at minimum. Have loot dropped be exotic at the minimum.

There. Epic dragon fights.

Seeing players camp dragon events is sort of depressing.

I’ve done it too (I am currently going after The kittena lot hoping for the boss achievement) and I’ve been trying to make conversation with people there via /say or /map, but most players are too bored to even say something, just standing there like zombies waiting for their brain meal to show.

Sigh.

never saw behemoth until my fifth char. shatterer only due to sheer luck on my 2nd, then never again until I started going by the timer. mark 2? never even heard of it until it got added to the timer.

random spawns are not fun. people just stand around waiting for them to happen. they should be more regular (max 15 min spawn window) but also more demanding (as I keep saying again and again, like the harathi event chain. it’s still easy, but if you go with a level-appropriate char it’s rather dangerous and even 80s get downed if they don’t watch out).

making them even more random only means most people will never see these events leveling 8 chars to lvl 80, always finished all starter areas with them, I never saw the jungle wurm during leveling. what about the people who only have 1 or 2 chars?

@Azure Prower: the notion of big epic fights which are random and drop the best loot available? yeah, great idea.. people without big guilds get shafted. people playing at odd hours (you know, those people who have to work for a living, sometimes in shifts) will never see them (even if they spawn when they are on, they won’t know it because not enough people are online to notify them).. you really thought your idea through, I see.

Your premise sounds fun but that just isn’t how video games work. Using your described situation this is what would actually happen.

1. Dragon spawns somewhere randomly
2. It messes up all over events in progress and bugs them until reset
3. People flock to the event in droves just like the current dragon events.
4. The strategy is posted online somewhere and it is still a scripted event. These dragons aren’t real, they have to follow some script
5. There is horrible clipping, terrain issues and bugs because the dragon landed somewhere it wasn’t designed for its model to fit
6. People are sent to overflow before the event even starts and most of them rage since it happens so infrequently.
7. people quit in droves.
8. dragons are changed back to their current implementation.

Here’s hoping that once living world stops being a trial run and starts being the real deal we get game-wide events like the Ancient Karka but with more polish and less lag.

I hit the timer very hard while it was still guaranteed rares on a per-character basis.
It was all I was doing in game.
Just as I was starting to realise I was no longer playing the game, just bouncing between events, ArenaNet nerfed it to the state it is now.
And I took that as a sign to stop chasing the timers. I’ve gone back to playing normally, and it’s a shedload more fun. I’ll do the events if I’m on the map when they pop, but otherwise, I just play normally now.
Sure, I probably don’t make as much gold as I would if I’d continued to chase events, but there’s more to the game than being rich.

Azure Prower.8701:

Have dragons spawn randomly 3 times a week. Fights take half an hour at minimum. Have loot dropped be exotic at the minimum.

There. Epic dragon fights.

And end up in an overflow and curse that others get free loot and you were left out.

How about the following suggestions:
- every single zone in the game should have a “dragon” event
- the event triggers sometime at random every twenty-four hours (with 3h cooldown)
- up the hp, mechanics and aoe damage on these bosses. Difficulty should be on the scale of current temple events

That would ripple these events through the world of Tyria. By doing that, finding 1 dragon would be more rare, although there’d always be something up.

The current problem with Meta events, is… There is no change of failing the event

but from a business perspective, it’s better to have something that looks cool and gives the player a false sense of accomplishment along side a small loot reward rather than have hundreds of players complaining on forums “Events are too hard!, NERF NERF”

Oranisagu.3706:

making them even more random only means most people will never see these events leveling 8 chars to lvl 80, always finished all starter areas with them, I never saw the jungle wurm during leveling. what about the people who only have 1 or 2 chars?

I have been thinking about this, but it could be solved on a technical level by increasing the spawn chance drastically while at least one character is in the vicinity who hasn’t encountered the event yet. It would be easy enough to keep track of how many times an individual character has been in a specific event so the chance could just go down over time.

For a new character, it would be “bound to happen”. For regular farmers standing in ever the same spot – they could be waiting for a long time.

google.3709:

The current problem with Meta events, is… There is no change of failing the event

but from a business perspective, it’s better to have something that looks cool and gives the player a false sense of accomplishment along side a small loot reward rather than have hundreds of players complaining on forums “Events are too hard!, NERF NERF”

In the beginning, when we were all “of appropriate level” and not maxed out, we failed the meta-events quite often. There is other event chains that get triggered in case of fails that we got to play instead.

I don’t think it is a business decision at all; I do think that the events don’t scale correctly. They should scale in a way that there is a 20-40% chance that an event fails, no matter how many level 80s are participating. Otherwise we’ll just keep missing out on the alternative line content.

Also, it depends on the map and time; Bloodtide Coast is pretty empty off-peak, and we’ve been trying to do the group events with 4-5 people and failed.

how about making dragon fights instanced?

this instance has the ability to hold massive ammounts of players. players can get here by talking to some coordinator at their respective faction base. then get ported to this map. this way the maps wont get overflow that fast and people can participate without normal camping the spawn.

the dragon event is random time so noone knows when.

after joining the map you have 3 options:

fight with vigil frontline troops to hold of dragaon spawns and monsters who atk the artillery. and deal dmg to dragons

join the durmand priory to build siege and fire to dmg the dragons and repair broken siege.

help the order of whisperers to sneak in ammo for the siege weapons. defend reinforcments from other orders and hold fallback camps. those camps produce the siege ammo.

- 3 camps: if all fall dragon event failed.
-20 siege weapons: if all get destroyed event fails.

each of the orders has a coordinator in the field that tells the people what needs to be done. e.g. vigil: The left flank is getting weak. Move up there and make sure it doesnt fall.
Priory: There are just 5 siege engines left help repair the broken and fire at the dragon.
wispers: The ammo for the sieges is low defend a caravan to resupply them.

this way people can choose what to do. dont have to stand in 1 spot and hit auto atk.
make dragon HP so high that its a fight of 30m-1h and scale it to the ammount of players.

just an idea:)

I think the problem here is frequency and little reward. Something you do over and over becomes less epic and even so if you get a rare you’ll probably just salvage or toss into themystic toilet. With this in mind, here’s my suggestion.

1. Make dragon spawns once a week or once in two weeks.
2. Before they spawn, tie it to the lore. E.g. order of whispers have discovered intel that kralkatoric will send his minion etc etc. Announce this by sending mass mail to everyone. Give place and time.
3. Pre events should be tense, repair cannons, arm lasers, distribute weapons to npcs. Hide yo kids, hide yo wives. Have an npc give a pep talk (a different one each week or two weeks).
4. Give these dragons the ability to pick players up and throw them as well as knock a bunch of them in the air.
5. Remove “safe spots” everybody is in danger within a certain radius. Ranged attacks do not work outside that radius.
6. Give exotics away and a very small chance to get precursors.
7. Create post dragon kill events so people linger around like revive dead npcs, put out fires, heal the land, repopulate the freakin forest, etc.
8. Improve culling handling and make sure the server can handle an entire population fighting a single epic dragon.
9. Baske in the praise of the masses.

DO IT!

It was epic when I played it for the first time, Dragon Event, JorLAG.
But after that, and tons of awful drops and wasted time…
I think I rather go do a Fractal Run.

dragons in this game are pathetic non moving targets for zergs to eat.
dragon nest have an epic hard to fight raids dragon bosses..

Sadly I’ve found myself pulling up the ol’ dragon timer more and more often. I sit there, waiting for the Zerg to show up, defeat the dragon without fear of losing, waypoint, and repeat.

I’m frustrated at myself because on one hand, I don’t want to contribute to killing the magic for myself and other first time players, but on the other they’re guaranteed wins, and guaranteed loot for less trouble than the dungeons.

I use the dragon timers just to see if something soon is going to happen in my area.

I too would rather have more events occur spontaneously rather the feeling like I’m standing in line waiting for the Apple store to open on new iPhone day.

The patience of these players are ridiculous, waiting for many, many minutes because the “window” is now open for it to begin. Even waiting when the timer is just counting down for the event window to open. For a battle that lasts for under 5 minutes and is a laggy, slideshow for most players. All for a rare they can buy for 25s. Yes I understand there is a snowballs chance to get a precursor but are the odds any better playing the Mystic slot machine?

It would make the game much more interesting. +1