Guild Wars 2

To me the problem with this event, aside from requiring so much coordination that generally only TTS, ATT and a few other guilds can clear it consistently, is that even when you do successfully complete a run, the rewards are inferior to Tequatl’s for the most part , in spite of taking more than twice the amount of time to do and organise. In terms of loot efficiency the only thing between the two that scales properly is Dragonite ore, but Golem Mark II and Karka Queen tend to be a far better investment of time for players that specifically want that.

Prior to this the point of doing the wurm for me in terms of rewards were the unique rewards Mini Cobalt Jungle Wurm Head, and the three types of Regurgitated Armor (which, frankly, aren’t all that nice-looking). I just picked up the last Regurgitated Armor just now, and I already had the mini for some time.

What reason should I or any other player who have all the unique drops already continue to do this content? It was fun for the first few times clearing it, but after almost 120 kills, it doesn’t quite feel the same any more. It doesn’t quite feel like anything, anymore. The process of getting the drops was in itself frustrating, as pure RNG with a low rate does not exactly feel rewarding – nowhere near as much as a guaranteed token would. (Patching this now wouldn’t change anything for me since I already have all three skins, but it would at least save other players the same frustration.) Failed attempts essentially nullify all the high value rewards, making an already inefficient encounter greatly more so. And of course there has been literally thousands of instances where players were denied drops due to bugs with event coding – which not even killing veteran wurms necessarily guarantees a reward. Same problem with allocation occurs with WvW defense coding, when using even a single supply on repairs gives full credit, but wiping an incoming zerg can give zero.

The Aetherblade path and fractals have the same issues – fractal skins being absurdly rare and RNG based has made high level fractalling rare in favour of farming the 30 tier – and the AB path has no unique drops you can’t buy. Hell, while there are unique recipes that every dungeon drops, the drop rate for those are so absurdly low that I only possess one, and most dungeon runners I know possess zero – and nobody takes that drop into account when deciding whether or not to run a dungeon since we can assume their rates to be zero.

The reward-time/difficulty relationship seems to be heavily skewed towards repetition of relatively easy content with a better reward ratio. Once players have Dungeoneer, it makes no sense to run something like HoTWp3, when one could easily run CoE repeatedly for the Charged material drops in addition to the gold, and generally low difficulty level. It makes no sense to run Aetherpath for skins that can be assumed to never drop. It makes no sense to run Triple Trouble hoping only for the tradeable Annelid rifle skin. And given how low precursor rates are from any form of content, they are essentially a null in the decision making process as to what content to do.

It would appear to me there needs to be a serious reconsideration overall of rewarding tasks of greater difficulty with consistently better rewards – enough to incentivise players to improve to allow themselves a chance of getting better returns. Neverwinter has its Lair of Lostmauth, RuneScape has its Nex/Bandos soloing, but Guild Wars 2 seems to have a conspicuous gap in the area of ‘high difficulty high reward content’.

Don’t tell anyone ok? This may sound really weird but … did you know that there are people that play games just for fun?

You don’t see tons of people doing Triple Trouble, for all the reasons you listed, but the people that do it is for no logical reason, it is because they like doing it, since this is pretty much the only “hardcore” thing in GW2.

BTW, I agree that the rewards should be revamped, but not too much.

As a general rule I agree; loot for the Triple Trouble Wurm event is abysmal and needs to be improved. The reason I keep doing it, anyway, is because I enjoy the difficulty and want to keep playing it to be that +1 on a statistic somewhere at ArenaNet that shows that players enjoy this type of content.

Hayashi.3416:

Hell, while there are unique recipes that every dungeon drops, the drop rate for those are so absurdly low that I only possess one, and most dungeon runners I know possess zero – and nobody takes that drop into account when deciding whether or not to run a dungeon since we can assume their rates to be zero.

I have the dungeon collections mostly done and what is this?

The first completion felt quite good for me, but after understanding all the mechanics over time, the ‘sense of accomplishment’ has disappeared. The main difficulty for it lies in the commanders who have to explain and coordinate the kills; reflect, condition and zerg roles are simple enough that while people prefer to segregate the roles, it’s not complicated to do more than one when things go sour. Or even all three roles, in the case of bad situations at Amber wurm. Phase II is nearly uncontrollable by any given player other than the commander since even if you can do maximum damage nonstop without being downed, the wurm can always choose the worst positioned player to charge into an invuln zone to guarantee a raid fail.

I find myself doing the content only because I like the people who also do it, as opposed to the content itself, at this point. In terms of content I do because of the sense of accomplishment, there is only bombing Griffonrook – and even that is only difficult because of griffon instant-attack bugs.

The idea behind the Vinewrath is good, but the rewards aren’t very good given that once you have the two minis, tonics, recipes and full luminescent unlocked, the rest of the bandit crest conversion options are frankly quite bad.

P.S. @DarkWasp: Things like this, delicious in their ~0.1% drop rate. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Recipe:_Nightmare_Coil

Since anything with an abysmal drop rate does not follow the law of large numbers in the standard sample sizes gamers operate in, you essentially can expect to never get one unless you do more than ten thousand runs, in which case you would probably get 10, give or take 5. Not that that would be of any use, since it’s account bound and you cannot sell the rest.

Incidentally, I did CoF at least 4 times as often as TA, and I don’t have the CoF recipes.

I think the reward system is the only thing I don’t like about Triple Trouble and Teq. Well that and Megaserver hopping.

Does anyone actually think the rewards are any good? I’ve been complaining about these for a while.

Rising Dusk.2408:

As a general rule I agree; loot for the Triple Trouble Wurm event is abysmal and needs to be improved. The reason I keep doing it, anyway, is because I enjoy the difficulty and want to keep playing it to be that +1 on a statistic somewhere at ArenaNet that shows that players enjoy this type of content.

Meanwhile I’m a -1 in that statistic because it falls on an inconvenient time of day and requires me to brave the ebbs and flows of my ISP + their servers for nearly 2 hours while I sit around and no nothing but wait.

Someone call me when we finally figure out to do this on regular megaservers with a -10 minute prep time like Tequatl.

Tl;dr
The point is to play a game you like and do something fun you enjoy.

That’s an issue as well. Over said number of triple wurm kills, I’ve seen quite a few instances where players get a wurm to low HP and disconnect, and are then unable to taxi back in, leaving them with absolutely nothing after almost an hour of preparation and play, as the ground chest isn’t granted when they finally get to taxi back in after everyone else has already looted it. Just today, we had a massive dc spike, where almost a fifth of the raid disconnected after spending half a hour on prep, just before the wurm spawned. Not all of them got back in.

It’s rarely a problem for me since our internet here is relatively reliable (even though the ping is massive), but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a problem.

@Harny

Abandoning the content entirely would fix my end of the issue, but no progress would be made. Once enough people start full-unlocking the Wurm rewards, it may get to a point where there may not be enough people to form the critical mass necessary for kills more than once or twice a day.

I agree with the premise that drops for doing Triple Trouble are not worth the effort. I have been in TTS since the beginning and have well over 500 Tequatl kills. I usually log-in every day for at least one Teq kill. I have been on a few Great Wurm kills, but I have also missed quite a few because space is limited. There are usually enough people for one raid but rarely enough for 2. If you can’t get into the instance within the first few minutes of it opening, you most likely won’t get to participate. The difference in the drops between the two fights makes the Wurm not worth the effort for me. Statements such as “play just have fun” are cliches that do not apply to the issues raised I.E. the drop rates for Triple Trouble are not in keeping with the difficulty of the task. Tequatl is killed multiple times a day with pick-up groups. The large guilds have done a great job in teaching the smaller guilds and servers the mechanics of the fight. Triple Trouble is different because the amount of coordination involved cannot be accomplished with pick-up groups and small guilds. If the rewards were greater, more effort might be made to learn and coordinate for the fight.

In Teq fights you are guaranteed at least 3 rares every fight, plus a whole bunch of greens and karma. I usually get 5 or 6 rares and an occasional exotic. I have received 3 weapons chests from Teq, and a whole bunch of minis.
From the Wurm I have never received the regurgitated armor or any minis. I have been in too many fights to count where it looks like we may win, only to lose at the last second because the wurm went into an invurn zone. The amount of coordination coupled with the sketchy drops makes the Wurm fight not worth the trouble.

And yes, I play the game to have fun. I consider the Teq fight fun, which is why I try to do it every day.

As a random aside, as far as I can tell the average drop rate of a Regurgitated Armor Box is 2%±0.5%, and the average drop rate of a Mini Cobalt Wurm head is 1%±0.2%, over all the declared drops over all the successful kills I’ve been with TTS for. It may be higher if people do not declare what they got. I consider myself lucky given some reflect-party regulars have only gotten their first chests recently in spite of having done it every day since launch.

It’s too hard, I have never completed Triple Trouble, nor do I care too.
I’m not elite enough.

Completing Triple Trouble is not about being an elite player, it’s about following the commanders instructions and being on the same page with everyone else. A group of average-skilled players who are cooperating with the commanders is going to have a much better time with TT than a set of “elite” players who are acting on their own and not as a team. Being on voice-comm is almost essential, it may be possible to get the kill without it but that would have to be a large set of people who are skilled at map chat and all of whom know exactly what they’re doing at all times.

Euryon.9248:

A group of average-skilled players who are cooperating with the commanders is going to have a much better time with TT than a set of “elite” players who are acting on their own and not as a team.

What he said. I have seen PuGs decap a few wurms before based on commands from a commander in say chat (map chat = suppression), but I have never seen a full kill, and it’s difficult to believe that none of those players are skilled.

My problem wasn’t with TT’s difficulty though, but the reward scaling. It still stands as the only content in the game with difficulty in the coordination – and that form of difficulty is something some people, especially those who do said coordination, do enjoy.

Euryon.9248:

Completing Triple Trouble is not about being an elite player, it’s about following the commanders instructions and being on the same page with everyone else. A group of average-skilled players who are cooperating with the commanders is going to have a much better time with TT than a set of “elite” players who are acting on their own and not as a team. Being on voice-comm is almost essential, it may be possible to get the kill without it but that would have to be a large set of people who are skilled at map chat and all of whom know exactly what they’re doing at all times.

This, and there is a very very tiny chance that even with enough skilled people they will act as a team rather than solo artistes.
I do Wurm as often as I can, would probably have stopped long ago if I hadn’t found condi but that is just me, even if the rewards where much better, without the condi groups to break up the monotony of doing it multiple times I would have left.

I think the only problem with triple trouble is that it really can’t be done without the entire raid on teamspeak, people with the essential builds, and around a hour of prep. The only obvious guild I see organizing this raid is on a regular basis TTS. If it wasn’t for them it would of probably be abandoned by now.

I can appreciate what the devs tried to do here but the raid is simply to complex to be as large as is and be something that’s popular and rewarding. The amount of people that are going to take the time to do all the leading and instructing is few and rare. Maybe if the rewards were better more guilds would be doing it. But drops are only worth as much the rarity of their aquisition according to economics. The rewards would just be farmed back into mediocrity after a month.

The raid is what it is though. The game doesn’t suffer from its existence it’s not just all that popular. A open world of random players that approaches in the game without outside instruction and direction simply has no chance at success. It really doesn’t fit in open world content. This would have been much better as a guild mission format that didn’t require so many ppl to beat.

Mireles Lore.5942:

But drops are only worth as much the rarity of their aquisition according to economics. The rewards would just be farmed back into mediocrity after a month.

This would be valid if the rewards in question are tradeable unique items. In fact, what you describe has already occurred for Connie’s Wedding Ring. While this is greatly delayed due to the 1% or lower droprate for the Annelid Rifle skin, it will eventually also follow the same trend.

In the case of untradeable unique items (perhaps with account bound tokens of a sort to allow for partial progress instead of a law-of-large-numbers-ignoring low drop rate), people would do it for the reward because there is no other way of obtaining it.

And in the case of tradeable non-unique items, it increases the supply from this one point at the cost of reducing the value of the supply from other sources at a rate proportional to the difference between the two. Say, if the reward was 8 gold in the chest up from 2 gold, the difference for this encounter would be very large given that most of the other rewards added together barely breach 1 gold most of the time, but the extent to which the economy as a whole is affected by gold inflation from this is greatly limited, given that over 50 minutes of a wurm kill, a semi-competent player speed-running dungeons with pugs over LFG would have acquired 6 gold in completion bonuses and 3-4 gold in drops plus tokens combined – for a total of 9+ gold. Dedicated speedrunning guilds would have even greater return rates. Since the total max theoretical gold generated per hour has not changed, the effect this has on overall inflation in the GW2 gold economy will be limited, and far less than the effect this has on the raid in isolation.

I’m advocating a combination of the latter – account bound tokens that can be exchanged for unique account bound rewards, together with a large increase in guaranteed tradeable nonunique loot, like t6 bags (the same items given by laurel trades), rares and cores/lodestones or anything Anet would prefer the availability of be increased.

Well I wouldn’t be opposed to a token system but I think my “farmed into mediocrity” still applies even if account bound when it comes to motivation of acquisition. One could argue that many people want the account bound skins because of a since of prestige. If everyone and their mom can farm it out in 10 runs people might lose their motivation to even play it. Which I suspect is the rationale Anet is using.

As for gold inflation… it is very hard to land a equilibrium in terms of making it rewarding while keeping the economy intact. Anet can only control the rate of production. We control the actual production. If triple trouble was all of a sudden the most time profitable thing in excess to do, production would explode because people would flock to it exponentially effectively devaluing the rest of the reward in the game. Which is why I think the rewards are more focused on activities that are the most accessible to everyone and what they want players to be doing rather than in terms of time spent.

I don’t really see a net changing their method on triple trouble for these reasons. Like I said before if it was a guild mission type thing that gave a reward once a week… it could have a drastically different reward basis that would be more forfilling. Which is why I feel like they should have done it as one.

In general when I see the triple trouble armor, I rarely think “man that guy must be an at triple trouble” instead I think “Wow that guy is much luckier then me when fighting triple trouble”. I honestly think a token system is still superior, especially if it used a similar reward scheme to what I proposed in the Raid CDI:

Single Decap: 1 Token
Double Decap: 3 Token
Triple Decap: 5 Token
Full Kill: 10 Tokens.
Vendor is only unlocked when you get a full kill

That way a couple groups desperate to kill him still have some motivation to finally get the full kill.

As most of the others have said, if you’re doing it for loot, you’re pretty much doing it wrong. Teq is for loot. It’s designed that way. THW is there to be a challenge. I’ve been in TTS for almost a year now, and I’ve never heard mention of THW being done just for loot. It’s almost entirely been because that event’s a challenge (derpfaced trolls aside).

As for a token system, it simply incites random players to gangbang on a single wurm head, causing it to scale disgustingly bad (remember the experimental zerg train wurms TTS tried?) and fail. Can the wurm be tweaked a little bit so it doesnt exactly require a full map? Certainly.

Few people do THW for loot because objectively speaking, the loot is really bad. Few people do THW as well.

Quite a few people do Tequatl for loot and karma because objectively speaking, the loot/time is one of the best for any world boss. Many people do Tequatl as well. It also used to be a challenge before the mechanics were fully discovered.

The observation that nobody does it for loot is correct, but is the problem itself. The loot from THW does not scale in any reasonable way with the time required for the attempt, let alone the difficulty in coordination (it’s not frankly very difficult to execute).

Altering the loot rate does not change the reason why people who do it for the challenge already do it, but it does give people who do not do it, a reason to do it.

I like doing triple wurm because it actually rewards a modicum of organizational skill. Not a lot, just a little.

That and its a giant monster fight. I have a love affair with doing epic battle against giant monsters. Those fights are the shining moments of games like this for me.

The problem with the annelid rifle skin is that its a terrible skin for an underused and underpowered weapon. Even people who really love rifles wont touch it and it doesn’t have a unique firing sound.

The point of doing TT is plural: points. Precious Mastery Points.

I’m still missing most of them….