Guild Wars 2

Set Up: The event timer shows ‘The Monastery Requires Assistance’ (but any event chain with a substantial reward, can be substituted here)

Result: A mass influx of people from all parts of Tyria to the center of Godslost Swamp, and then… they wait.

Meanwhile: The Monastery Requires Assistance event, just sits there until usually one or two people (on my server)finish it. Now 3 simultaneous events pop up:

• in the Heartwoods
• in the monastery
• in Taminn Foothills

The Quandary: And even thou there is a mass of sentient flesh just sitting at the center of the swamp. The PreEvents most times, just flounder there with many people hoping that somebody else will take care of the events for them. So for the events above:

1. is usually finished by the Champion Train.
2. again tends to be completed by a select few people
3. is usually the last event to be completed most times by only one or two people

The Question: So what change, I wonder, would make people get up off their collective duffs and go out to complete the PreEvents?

The Problem: There is just no incentive for people to go do the PreEvents themselves.

The Proposal: Make the PreEvents worth their while for the mass of people in the center of the swamp to assist in completion of the PreEvents.

How?: Well, that is where you come in fellow Forumites. What incentive would work?

Example: What about maybe a Small Chest on completion of one of the PreEvents, with just enough to be not unbalancing but still worthwhile.
Even better…Have the rewards for the PreEvent chest scale up for every person who is sedentary at the Heart of Godslost. That way, those of us who are actually doing the PreEvents would care less if there were leechers. “Yep, you folks all just sit there…I’ll get it.”

Conclusion: Let’s come up with a way to reward people for actually playing the game, not for having it played for them.

I think if rewards were better at the ending big event if you participated in the pre-events more people would do them.

I think that every pre-event you complete leading into a boss chest should increase the number of guaranteed rare or better drops from the boss chest.

I frequently find myself being the guy who solos all of the SB pre-events while the fleshy mass camps in the swamp.

At the very least, make it so that standing in swamp water ruins their gear.

To be honest, I think a lot of the people that just stand there are newer players that don’t know about the pre-events and they’re significance to getting the world boss to pop.

Nobody explained it to me the first month I was playing so I just thought that “pre” implied some sort of countdown timer. Sounds stupid, but the boss always popped up shortly after so I didn’t think anything of it.

As for providing more incentive, I think that either a small chest or a decent amount of Karma would be incentive enough for most people.

easy answer?

What would make you do a Chain’s PreEvents?
More dragonite ore….

Maybe if people showed others where these pre-events were, more people would go do them. I have no idea where they are, lol. I’ve no clue where the champs are in Queensdale, either. Except the Oak. Ha ha, just call me Clueless.

I think some people don’t leave because, in the past, the big bosses went down so quickly, they didn’t want to miss them.

I see this with SB a lot. I have seen players argue about who is going to go do the events, or ask “is anyone doing the pres”?
I do them all the time.
It’s not a matter of knowing where they are, when you look at your map, they are clearly marked and very easy to get to.
As a solution, I like the idea of the more pres you do, the better your drops for the final event.
And maybe put a timer on the pres, don’t do it in time, the event timer resets. That should stop layers from doing a train on the pre events as well.

i like that idea too since I am always the one doing the pre-events.
and no it is not the new players- it is 80’s and people with commander icons who have never heard of Brenda and coudn’t be bothered it they did

• jheryn & mtpelion: boosting the final chest depending on how many PreEvents you did. Yes that would have potential

• Tryxtr: Yes surely some of them are new people who don’t know about the PreEvents. The events do pop up on the map with the UI hinting to do them but the UI is not very clear about it. Maybe part of the problem are the multiple Commander Tags that are milling about in the swamp drawing the new people to the sedentary lifestyle?
  As for Karma, I wonder about that as an incentive. There is already Karma given out for completion, that has not motivated to date I don’t believe. For example: I am sitting on 5 million Karma right now, adding a little bit more wouldn’t motivate me personally.

• LordByron: Dragonite may do it and/or maybe Empyreal and Bloodstone drops would help too.

• Inculpatus: Yes community guidance would surely help. The official GW2 Wiki is a lifesaver for new and seasoned players alike. I have been playing since Beta and I still use it Every day

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadow_Behemoth

That tells you almost nothing about the encounter. Perhaps if we as a community actually documented the pre-events for these things, it would raise awareness. I know for a long time I struggled to understand how it all connected, and now that I know I normally do the pre’s.

Finding accurate information on this game is surprisingly difficult, largely due to the community’s mentality: “if everyone knows, it’s less for me”.

Zerole:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Secrets_in_the_Swamp

Sometimes the wiki takes some digging

For the Shadow a Behemoth at least, I don’t think at lot of people know that ‘the monastery needs assistance’ is part of the timer.

I’ve said in chat, the pre event for SB is up. And people are going ‘no it’s not’ or ???. I tell them about the monastery event, while running over there, and they seem surprised. It doesn’t show on the big map like the portals and it’s not obvious that it’s part of SB (or even a logical part of the event chain).

As for the portals event, 2 get done fast. It’s the last one that has a longish run, to the event and then to SB that often sits. I think it’s the run that’s stopping people as well as being an event that one person can do. So the people sit and wait for that one person to d it. Laziness combined with having experience of getting partway there and it gets done so they have to run back.

Before they buffed the SB, I’ve done the final portal event and barely been able to get back and hit the boss a couple of times before it died. The chance of not getting the loot because you did the work was a deterrent.

Yalora Istairiea.6287:

Zerole:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Secrets_in_the_Swamp

Sometimes the wiki takes some digging

Digging through the wiki sounds like a lot more work than just standing in the swamp.

Main point: information doesn’t really seem to flow too freely though the player base.

It’s not that it’s not easily available (there’s a little of that though), it’s that people get used to having others do the job for them, consciously or not.

Since there’s always one guy doing the events, making everything go right, they don’t know or even bother knowing that some things might go wrong. And when that dude is gone, they are left waiting around wondering if there’s a bug.
One day I saw a bunch of people waiting on a hill in Queensdale. They were waiting for the boar. No one launched the event. After watching them for 5 minutes I felt sorry for them and launched it.

I’ve noticed that people only show up to events once there’s a high probability for success.

Take the Temple of Dwayna.

It’s nearly impossible to muster up even 2-3 people to help you do the pre-events because the odds of the temple push flaming out at the Risen Priestess is extremely high. But once you get past the Risen Priestess, people filter in and by the time you engage the Statue itself you now have 50 people.

It’s like this for almost every event in the game. People will only show up to do Arah once you’ve made it past Anchorage, people will show up for Karka Queen once you’ve passed the camps, people will only show up for Eye of Zhaitan once you’ve passed the champ abom, etc.

In a way it makes sense, no one wants to fail and waste their own time. I remember one day trying to Temple of Balthazar with one friend, we simply couldn’t keep up with the events and gave up after 3 hours. The feeling was horrible, I had to take a week off from the game after that.

This game should reward effort, not success rate. That’s why no one does pre-events because you get the same reward at the end for investing no effort. Actually in most cases, your reward is better, since you don’t have the pay the repair bills the poor suckers that did the pre-events had to.

Increase the time between pre-events and SB popping out of the ground. Seriously, it’s no fun running up to the foothills alone, do the events and race back trying to get there in time. Nothing else is needed there.

Some others might not be done because it isn’t clear that they are part of a chain? Just guessing here.

In the case of SB, I think the answer is a bit more simple…

Give us more time. Not for the events themselves, because they go down fairly quickly, but when you go to do the pre’s for SB, and you do all of them, you cannot make it back to the swamp for the “main event” is almost over. Unfortunately, in SB’s case, many times he’s down to less than 25% before you can warp/run back to the swamp, especially if the last pre is the one in Tamin Foothills. (Opinion Alert:) I think that if you get to the boss when they’re down too low it affects your rewards, which makes it a waste of time to do.

I think the fix would be that they would either have to be done in order (i.e. one set of portals, then the next pops, and finally the third) and then give a minute or so before the final events start, or barring that, simply give us a short “break” between the pre-events and the SB event.

Nobody (I don’t think) likes to be on their way back from pre-event #3 only to have someone yell “SB’s down!” in map chat before you get there.

In other world boss fights, the problem isn’t so amplified, because most of the pre-events are within a short distance, so you have plenty of time to get to the boss before he gets too low for you to get any rewards.

edit: I didn’t see Astral’s, Peetee’s and Rouven’s posts… sorry for the rehash….

boost karma rewards from pre-world boss events by 5×... or the monetary reward by 5×... I’m not running way the hell out of my way to the centaurs so i can make 2s then spend 1.5s mapping back so i don’t end up missing SB alltogether… nor am I gonna run over there for 150 karma or whatever bogus karma reward it is…

One of the reasons I do the meta bosses now is for T7 materials. What if the pre events spawned a chest with one or two prices of dragonite for level 80s and something level appropriate for other levels? This would help to make the pre events worthwhile. Right now, I do them just to move the event along and because other people might not be doing them.

I’m doing extra work that benefits the whole group and getting essentially the same reward.

one of the problems is that each pre-event takes about 5 seconds to complete. closing each portal can be soloed in like 4 mashes of skill 1. no one else has a chance to get a hit in edgewise. Most people don’t do them because they know they’ll be completed by the time they get there.

I already do them. Always have(well maybe almost always, closer to 99% than 100%). It seems to have gotten better, I haven’t had to solo the entire Shadow Behemoth chain in a while!

What I would like to see is a fix to some of the annoyances with the pre-preevents. The keg event for Shadow Behemoth and siege collection for The Shatterer. Those two events scale very badly.

Mystic: A few days ago instead of doing the Monastery event as usual, I ran to the event and waited. Seven minutes went by before someone else came to complete it.

So I then ran to the Taminn event to see where it was at and it was still at 0/3 portals closed. So I waited there too. another 3 minutes past before someone(different then the person in the first event) showed up for that one.

I ran down to the swamp afterwards and I counted no less then 23 people doing the Portals in the Swamp event.

They waited for a total of about 10 minutes in the swamp when it could have been completed in about 2 minutes and moved on if they would have just made a little effort.

I guess that was the reason that I wrote this Topic in the first place. It was just sad to see so many people just standing there.

I’m generally that one guy at Taminn Foothills, just because it needs doing. I personally don’t mind and enjoy myself well enough.

However, there is absolutely zero incentive to do it. It’s always the last to complete. The moment I do so, a pre-event pops in the swamp. The zerg waiting for SB completes it in a matter of seconds before I can return. They get the exact same reward I just got, because they got their own event of equal value. They also didn’t have to pay for a waypoint port just to make it back in time for the actual world event.

At the end of the day, when all accounts are balanced, I’m paying (albeit an insignificant amount) so they can do the event.

Clockwork Bard.3105:

I’m generally that one guy at Taminn Foothills, just because it needs doing. I personally don’t mind and enjoy myself well enough.

However, there is absolutely zero incentive to do it. It’s always the last to complete. The moment I do so, a pre-event pops in the swamp. The zerg waiting for SB completes it in a matter of seconds before I can return. They get the exact same reward I just got, because they got their own event of equal value. They also didn’t have to pay for a waypoint port just to make it back in time for the actual world event.

At the end of the day, when all accounts are balanced, I’m paying (albeit an insignificant amount) so they can do the event.

That is actually incorrect. The people waiting at the swamp get a bigger reward than you did because that is considered a group event for some reason even though all the events are just 3 portals plus a bunch of the same mobs.

Khisanth.2948:

That is actually incorrect. The people waiting at the swamp get a bigger reward than you did because that is considered a group event for some reason even though all the events are just 3 portals plus a bunch of the same mobs.

Haha! Shows how often I actually do that event. I think the last time I was part of it was when three of us tried to take SB before a late-night reset. Good to know.

It’s ultimately a game of chicken. There’s a benefit to being the one that holds out for the best outcome. But, if all participants hold out for the best outcome then the worst outcome happens: nobody gets anything.

Another example: Over the weekend I tried a slightly different test.

Set Up: The event timer shows for the Slay the Shatterer Event ‘Preparations have begun’

Result: A mass influx of people from all parts of Tyria to the Lowland Burns Waypoint and … they wait.

Meanwhile: 2 simultaneous events pop up:

• Escort the Sentinel squad to the Vigil camp in Lowland Burns
• Collect siege weapon pieces for Crusader Blackhorn

The Quandary: When I Way Point in to Lowland Burns, a bunch of people are either standing at the mortars or over at the rock to the left of when the Shatterer lands. The PreEvents are still active for the events above:

1. I run to the start of the event and all the Envoy are down. I resurrect and escort them to the forward camp, alone. PreEvent number 1 complete
2. more people have arrived and are milling about the camp
3. I run over to the Collection PreEvent and complete it, again ALONE
4. I return to the forward camp and join the amalgamated mass of people
5. Shatterer spawns and is defeated

Conclusion: Since there is no problem getting from the completed PreEvent to to the spawn point, I again propose there is just no incentive to do the Pre. That and people are just plain lazy I guess.

A good solution for making people do the preevents, is not to give better rewards for them. It’s to make them timed, failable and if they fail the main even doesn’t start at all until the next cycle

THAT will get people to do those quickly.

jheryn.8390:

I think if rewards were better at the ending big event if you participated in the pre-events more people would do them.

This right here is the answer for the population. I do a lot of the pre-events, but I am in the minority. I have to post in map chat, “CRusader Angaria bag farm is up at [Anchorage Waypoint]” to get people to come do the mid-pre event for the gates of arah. It’s neigh impossible for me to get people to escort Warmaster Chan. Not to mention that he bugs out all the time.

A lot of the problem at least on SoR is that the Temple Events are SUPER buggy too. We had two weeks recently (many times in the past as well) where we couldn’t do Melandru, Dwayna, or Gates of Arah due to them getting stuck at certain parts of their progression. This is why I want a two week update dedicated to just squashing bugs.

I’m that guy who goes to Tamini upon completion of monastery pre pre pre event, and destroys the portals alone within 30 seconds of them spawning… then I ignore the other two portal locations, and WP to the swamp to catch the main event by destroying the third of 3 portals. Why teams of 2-3 players can take 4 times as long as me to clear essentially the same objective is puzzling, but it only barely works.

Fixes:

1. Give an additional 30 second delay before the heart of the swamp portals spawn after the third of the peripheral portals spawn.
2. Give 1x dragonite ore per event completed. You destroy all three surrounding portals, get 3x dragonite ore.
3. Give 4 times the amount of silver per event. Why this absurd amount? BECAUSE WAYPOINT COSTS. Also, double the karma reward while you’re at it, so it isn’t as pathetic – at the moment, you get way more karma from WvW/dungeons/champ farming.

It’s always an issue on the other events where difficulty, rather than laziness, is the factor. Especially cases of ‘artificial difficulty’. Sure, Dwayna’s priestess can be 3-manned, we’ve done it many times before because nobody else came along, but it’s a little unnerving when a fight that is at least twice as difficult as the statue fight – a simple dodge-when-she-casts-light-up mechanic, has rewards so severely insignificant to it. Perhaps a second boss chest for the Priestess will help. Ditto for Melandru. 5 manning melandru gives us next to nothing, then the horde comes in to kill spiders and gets guaranteed rares. That’s kind of broken.

While they’re at it, removing the Melandru Priest’s stupid metamorphosis skill would help greatly. Trying to coordinate 4 pugs who are barely willing to do it to kill the acos properly is an abject nightmare. Prior to the patches, when Melandru was at least reliably Interruptible, he was soloable – so at least I know that if I spend half an hour killing him, I can summon the zerghorde not long after. Now, I don’t even have that guarantee… when the pugs end up being unable to coordinate. As a result, the temples are just Not Done.

Balthazar is the worst offender. People are so bad at guarding the rear that it fails most of the time even in the rare occasions a guild decides to do it for the Obsidian Shard merchant. Allowing the NPCs to be ressed after the mobs are cleared and the event to be continued would increase Balthazar participation sharply.

Other possible ways to incentivise events, other than just giving chests for boss type pres and 1x dragonite ore (and improved rewards for map-crossing pres) for nonboss pres, may include classing pre-events separately for achievements, particularly daily achievements. People will do stuff for achievements’ sake while the economy is largely unaffected.

Yalora Istairiea.6287:

Another example: Over the weekend I tried a slightly different test.

Set Up: The event timer shows for the Slay the Shatterer Event ‘Preparations have begun’

Result: A mass influx of people from all parts of Tyria to the Lowland Burns Waypoint and … they wait.

Meanwhile: 2 simultaneous events pop up:

• Escort the Sentinel squad to the Vigil camp in Lowland Burns
• Collect siege weapon pieces for Crusader Blackhorn

I have to admit it was months of killing The Shatter before I realized that the pre-events had to be completed before he would arrive, and just stood around with all the other people, I noticed in map chat someone asking if anyone was doing the pre’s one day and started paying closer attention, now if I’m there I normally ask if anyone is doing them and if they need any help.

I think most of the folks standing around are just as clueless as I was, and I would agree if you do the pre-events your rewards should be substantially better than the folks who just stand around like bumps on a log, maybe a guaranteed exotic drop.

Maybe significantly Up the karma rewards for both the pre and the world boss? for people who want obsi shards.

I try to do at least one of the heartwood or monastery portals if I am there when they start. The tamlinn one is a no-no as I will never make it back in time for the main event due to my loading times.

The collection pre for Shatterer is less of an issue. The more people there doing it then the longer it takes to do since the event will scale up the number of pieces to be collected. Unless that has changed. I don’t do world events anymore so I don’t even know when timers were added.

I think they have tied Shatterer pre events to the status of the nearby Fort. Three times, after seeing the event go overdue, I liberated the Fort, and immediately the pre events pop. Just an FYI.

zenleto.6179:

The collection pre for Shatterer is less of an issue. The more people there doing it then the longer it takes to do since the event will scale up the number of pieces to be collected. Unless that has changed. I don’t do world events anymore so I don’t even know when timers were added.

This is correct. Moving to ‘help’ resource collection will actually make the event take longer; there’s a limit to how many siege weapons may drop, but the event scales up anyway.

Each pre should increase the chance of your likelihood to get a better loot, for example, each pre you did adds a temporary MF and Karma boost. Remember the SSC buffs? those kind of buffs. +100 MF for each pre you do, +100% karma boost for each you complete.

There will be no changes in the loot table of the chest nor the loot table of the bonus guaranteed chest. BUT, you get a lot of temporary BONUSES that lasts for a while (say equivalent to the boss timer event like 15min). So if you have have completed the four (3 Portals each at N, E, and W plus final 3 portals at the main swamp), you get +400% MF and Karma boost that lasts you a good 15min. (or even more if needed) but gone when you leave the zone.

I really liked what Anet did to Anet SSC event on those temporary buffs, players tend to mow down all DEs.

Yalora Istairiea.6287:

Another example: Over the weekend I tried a slightly different test.

Set Up: The event timer shows for the Slay the Shatterer Event ‘Preparations have begun’

Result: A mass influx of people from all parts of Tyria to the Lowland Burns Waypoint and … they wait.

Meanwhile: 2 simultaneous events pop up:

• Escort the Sentinel squad to the Vigil camp in Lowland Burns
• Collect siege weapon pieces for Crusader Blackhorn

The Quandary: When I Way Point in to Lowland Burns, a bunch of people are either standing at the mortars or over at the rock to the left of when the Shatterer lands. The PreEvents are still active for the events above:

1. I run to the start of the event and all the Envoy are down. I resurrect and escort them to the forward camp, alone. PreEvent number 1 complete
2. more people have arrived and are milling about the camp
3. I run over to the Collection PreEvent and complete it, again ALONE
4. I return to the forward camp and join the amalgamated mass of people
5. Shatterer spawns and is defeated

Conclusion: Since there is no problem getting from the completed PreEvent to to the spawn point, I again propose there is just no incentive to do the Pre. That and people are just plain lazy I guess.

Maybe it changes from server to server but on mine the escort one generally gets done pretty quick.

The siege collection event on the other hand …. well that is at least partially ANet’s fault even without considering rewards. The event itself doesn’t scale properly while the number of pieces that need to be turned in increases the number of siege pieces available to collect does not, you can get them as drops from the ghost as well but the net result still means that the more than one person doing the event is just going to slow things down. Unfortunately getting close enough to check if anyone is doing it can cause it to scale. This forces a decision that shouldn’t even exist! You could ask on mapchat first but people don’t always respond. >_<

Oh and the keg event for Shadow Behemoth suffers from a similar problem.

LordByron.8369:

easy answer?

What would make you do a Chain’s PreEvents?
More dragonite ore….

that is the last thing we need, more crap to right click and destroy that we can’t sell.
if anything that will get less people to do the pre events.

Some of the events you mentioned are actually better to do solo than as a group, but I do agree that there is a problem with lack of volunteers for those pre events.

Of the mentioned events, a big group could actually cause the failure of the first pre event of Arah, once the group gets big enough, the first vet (I think it’s a Risen Noble) will spawn as a champion instead and will 1-2 hit the NPCs.

Bring a zerg to Eye of Zhaitan escort from the swamp and you will be surprised with nothing less than TWO champion abomination with another champion subjugator as a bonus (bloodiest pre-event I’ve ever seen).

Any more than 1~2 people doing the collect part of The Shatterer will double the amount of items needed, but it will not increase the spawn rate, making it a lot slower to be completed.

Soo yeah, we need more individual volunteers with some events, but keep groups away from them until they balance that terrible scaling that makes solo events become harder than group events.

Sligh.2789:

I think they have tied Shatterer pre events to the status of the nearby Fort. Three times, after seeing the event go overdue, I liberated the Fort, and immediately the pre events pop. Just an FYI.

Which fort would that be? The one at guardian stone waypoint? It’s currently overdue for nearly 2 hours but I see no events nearby.

Put a 120 second timer on the 3 SB pre-events – if they aren’t all done within that time SB DOESN’T SPAWN. Can’t be bothered to walk across the swamp? No loot for ANYONE then.

There’s no incentive because there’s no negative consequence for not getting off your butt and helping…