Guild Wars 2

Orpheal.8263:

People QQing like pros over those ridiculous low 500 correct presses, which are in essence just only 5 completed songs and its mostly done in like participating 2-3 rounds or just a few more, based on how often you get kicked out cause of being just a bad player.

Unfortunately, some activities in gw2 aren’t so much about “L2P” as you say, but ping. I’ve been struggling with bell choir since day one. I actually think it looks fun and I’d like to enjoy it. I press the buttons at the correct times, but having the server receive that message 2-3 seconds late means I just get kicked repeatedly. I play guitar and have for over a decade, so it’s not a lack of understanding. I understand time signatures and the premise of the game, but the lag makes it impossible. Please try to be kinder to people who express difficulty with parts of the game. You don’t know why they’re having a problem.

Djinn.9245:

Regarding Bell Choir: don’t make something so affected by latency a required part of completing the event achievements please.

^ Yes, this. Please, Anet, in the future, consider the people who have terrible internet. I know it’s not your fault, and I definitely think things like bell choir should be available. Having even one more option available that doesn’t rely so heavily on a good connection would make it possible for lots of people to complete the meta. I really enjoy seasonal events and I enjoy receiving titles as a reminder of them, but I doubt that’s going to happen for me this time around. :c

Part 1:
Elegy, you don’t need to have a super fast internet connection to have low pings.
Sure, faster connections help to reduce the pings, but also people with slower connections like 6mb/s or slower have options to reduce their pings to optimize their internet for online games with the help of their internet providers through Fastpath

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_path
its an optimization to reduce significantly the latency for ADSL internet connections that you can get from your Internet Provider, thus it will reduce the pings fro you when you play online.

I have more than enough understanding for personal problems, cause as I said, I have self some handycaps given since birth with my own hand to eye coordination, unable to type with 10 fingers (I type with 2-4 !!) and I never had any problems with Bell Choir.
Sure, with my 50mb/s connection I’ve a faster internet connection, than surely alot of other players out there and with it lesser lags ect., but a handycapped hand to eye coordination sure is same as problematic for such minigames, especialyl when really alot of commands have to be pressed in a very short time where I start also to struggle, when it gets simply too fast for me or to many commands have to be pressed at too short intervals…
But simply gettign 500 correct button presses is a freaking joke, especially given the real long time you have to get this single achievement done.
Don’t forget, the event is still running UNTIL JANUARY THE 13TH!!!
So still whopping 13 days to go for that little achievement.

But people overexaggerate and freak out here, as if this tiny task would be absolutely undoable, they turn ants into elefants!! And that is simply not correct, completely irrelevant of what problems people may have. people have absolutely more than enough tome to get this done.
Compared to the 500 correct Button Presses, collecting 500 ugly Pullovers in time, is really a problem, cause of ugly pullovers not dropping by far as often as like socks or hats, for that amount of pullovers, you really need to grind .

Bell Choir is a L2P problem, because even with latency problems, it stays just a matter of getting used to the situation and to learn to handle your handycap as best as possible.
When you know that that your connection is slow and your command gets executed basically 1-2 seconds later, after you pressed.
Make an educated guess, what would a smart person do then ???
…
….
…..
RIGHT!! You just click those 1-2 seconds ealier, before the ball hits the blue line and your command should get then executed at the right moment, if you have exactly like 1 or 2 seconds of latency (more usually 1 than 2)

Part 2:

On the other hand, as people have written also here, the activity seems to be sometime (the instance I mean now) laggy.
It happened to me just even with my fast connection too, that regardless when I tipped, I got damaged and got kicked out quickly.
So I exactly know what the people are talking about here…
However, it was until now just a 1 day thign for me, that happenc just only once to me and at that day I simply made the JP instead.
Remember, I’m handicapped – there’s so far no JP which I haven’t done successfully also..
Why? Because i simply got used to my handicap. I don’t give up instantly, when I hit on a problem. I stay stubborn to the end, until I’m successful (My zodiac sign is Capricorn, born in January, so I go with my head through walls if it must be xD ^^)

And that is what I can suggest only to people to which have problems, whatever they may be.
Don’t get frustrated so quickly, only because you don’t are successful instantly.
Get yourself thicker skin.
If you fail, try harder next time as often as needed. So more you do something, so more you get used to what you do and get more experienced, you learn from your failures.

If technical issues are your problems like latency, there are solutions also.
Besides of FastPath for those with slow internet connections, an other solution has also been presented here – gettign out of the instance and reenter it, as that may help to get a lagless bell choir instance with maybe also lesser players inside where actualy get also played slower songs currently where it is alot easier to make correct button presses.

This, together with the information what you should do at the begin of a round (which gets shown to everyone when enterign the instance) plus choosing alsway to play the low part will absolutely ensure everyone to get 500 correct button presses until the 13ths january!!

Playing the low part will guarantee the player always to have the slowest song parts and is basically always in all songs the most easiest part to play.
An inexperienced bell choir player shouldn’t go for the middle or high song parts ever as they are always the fastest and hardest to play parts. Sure they net you in the most button presses, but what helps you to net in alot of presses, when you can’t get them right and defat yourself basically in seconds only with those parts??

Right. nothing. So its better to get 500 presses the slow but save way always playing the low song parts.

Orpheal.8263:

I don’t give up instantly, when I hit on a problem.

I’m not “ignoring” the rest of your post, but this is the sentence I want to answer. I didn’t see her say she gave up and I didn’t either. But GW2 is a game that is meant to be played for fun. Its not chess, its not football, its a video game. If some people find it an enjoyable challenge to do something a large number of times and fail, that’s great for them. Some people don’t. Some people play games in order to have some lighthearted fun. That’s why some people don’t enjoy PvP – its very competitive when what they really want is to relax after a hard day at work or whatever. I get that some people actually enjoy competition and that’s fine. I’m not saying they shouldn’t have their way of having fun, why are those who like things to be difficult or competitive trying to tell me I can’t have fun AND get rewards also?

Incredibly dull. Stop filling my bags with Wintersday junk.

And bring back Marionette…

One negative comment about Presents, as I’m sure I’m just adding to the many.

We only have so much Bag and Bank space! I love presents as much as any other guy/gal but dang. I’m constantly running to my bank to unload and have started unloading into my own private guild bank, just so I keep keep playing. HOWEVER the problem with that is… the item doesnt stack when I put it my guild bank like your private bank does. (Unless I’m missing something, only been playing a few months). I have to manually put the item into my inventory, then merge it with the same excessive inventory item, then put it back into my guild bank. EVERY single item. Over and over again. Ugh

Tamasan.6457:

My consolidated feedback on Wintersday 2014:
There’s many things that ArenaNet does right. Wintersday 2014 was not it. If I was feeling very charitable, I’d grade this as a C-, at best. It’s like going to your favorite restaurant, ordering something you know you like, enjoying the first bite, but then finding a hair in the food on the second bite.

1) Bell Choir. Buggy and frustrating. At least half the time, I join and every note I play is wrong, but if I stop playing notes, I don’t take damage and get a perfect score and not credit. Most of the rest of the time, I enter an instance which is or nearly is completed. So between these two problems, I spend most of my time in loading screens, “waiting on additional players”, and not enjoying the activity. For something that is identical to last year and should not have changed, this is a complete failing grade, F. Suggestions: Fix the bug, lower the waiting time between songs, and don’t allow new players into an instance that has started the second song.

2) Winter Wonderland JP. Only small changes from last year, and I’m fine with them. There seem to be a lot of people complaining about lag, but I was not one of them. Only real problem I see is the falling damage on the candy cane. Grade: B+. Suggestion: just turn falling damage off for the whole instance – everything else is highly scripted so it shouldn’t make any difference anywhere else in the puzzle.

3) Grawnk. Perfect. Short, sweet, light-hearted. A+ Need more things like this.

4) Toypocalypse. It’s not Wintersday if I can’t play with my friends. I realize that code changes were required for PvP (and I’m enjoying PvP more than I used to, so that was good). However, it was entirely a choice to not devote resources into fixing this activity. Why it is even in the competitive activity format is kind of a mystery to me anyway. I’ll be generous here and grade this as a D. Suggestion before next year: allow me to join with friends, of course. Or if I’m asking for the stars, a complete competitive activity overhaul. I’d like to play with my friends in other activities as well. Parties should end up in the same instance – not necessarily on the same team, as that may make some things like Snowball Mayhem and Keg Brawl unfun going up against a premade – but at least put us in the same instance so after I launch a snowball volley at a friend I can laugh about it with them on teamspeak.

5) Snowball Mayhem. No changes needed with the exception of what I just said above, as it can be difficult to get into the same instance as friends. Grade A.

6) Infiniarium. Seems there was some variations or additions for some of the tasks – this is a good thing. And as always, running around doing the SMASH EVERYTHING thing is so cathartic. A+.

7) PvP reward track. Perfect. A.

8) Divinity’s Reach, Ho-ho-tron/Dolyak Event. Again, perfect. A.

9) Achievements. Mostly fine, but more thought needs to go into the cap for repeatable ones. 30 rounds of Snowball Mayhem for 3 points? With 5-10 minute matches, plus starting/loading times, that’s about 6 hours. That’s just a bit silly. Grade B.

10) Wintersday Presents. I feel like I’m being trolled by Arenanet here, even after the update. It’s like some awful meme: “Yo dawg I heard you like RNG boxes, so I put RNG boxes in your RNG boxes, so you can risk getting banned for using an autoclicker while you rage about RNG.” Seriously, Arenanet: stop it. RNG lottery isn’t fun. Boxes in boxes is absurd. No grade for this, please go to the principal’s office for detention.

I personally had no problems with Bell Choir this year (other than the high chance of being put into an instance that is already on its last song or even “play what you like”), despite playing on a kittenty laptop and slow internet. I’d give Bell Choir a B because while I would be able to think of some small improvements, none of them are critical and I enjoyed Bell Choir as much as ever.

Other than that first point, I agree with you 100% and I’ll leave it at that.

Lillith.5724:

Can’t do the bell choir or the jumping puzzle but required for the Wintersday daily? Please change this.
Tried a round of the choir and kept dying, so that was a bust. As for the JP, well I’m not great at those and usually just steer clear of it.
These two shouldn’t be included as a requirement of the dailies.

Sad.

GreenAlien.5623:

Did you even try the bell choir? That is all that is required, you know?

i did try the bell choir and the jumping puzzle…. unsuccessfully unfortunately….. and did NOT get credit. after the first few attempts to get the credit, i just said heck with it and didn’t bother, just did the events that i could do.

Togashi Jack.9531:

Gaile – the problem is that the event is actually kind of bugged. The daily just requires participation, so you should be able to go in, miss every note and still get your daily. I had gone in, hit notes, and was ejected for failure about 4 or 5 times before the daily recognized that I had participated.

same here……

I’m a little annoyed at the way the Festival page is set up. Why put things that don’t count towards the Meta on the page? I did Snowball Mayhem, waste of time it didn’t count, I did Toypocalypse again waste of my time it didn’t count either. Honestly if I had known that from the beginning I would have saved myself 3 gold paying that Ho-Ho and the annoyance of wasting my time even trying to do this. Really why no warning that not everything listed counted?

Roundabout.1752:

I’m a little annoyed at the way the Festival page is set up. Why put things that don’t count towards the Meta on the page? I did Snowball Mayhem, waste of time it didn’t count, I did Toypocalypse again waste of my time it didn’t count either. Honestly if I had known that from the beginning I would have saved myself 3 gold paying that Ho-Ho and the annoyance of wasting my time even trying to do this. Really why no warning that not everything listed counted?

I was a little surprised to find this out myself. I looked into it and found that when you clicked on the adept toymaker achievement, it lists all of the other achievements that count toward this.

I really did not like the fact that to get the Adept Toymaker achievement, you have to do ALL the 11 prescribed achievements. This does not seem consistent with how GW2 operated in the past. For the old dailies you were given 10 possible dailies but only had to do 5 of them. For the now defunct monthlies, you were given 8 possible monthlies but only needed to accomplish 4. Even now, the new dailies are complete ANY 3 out of 4 PVE dailies, 4 WVW dailies and 4 PVP dailies.

I won’t be able to complete the adept toymaker achievement this year because i cannot do the bell choir. i am not musically inclined and try as i might, i cannot even do the very first song. It is frustrating not to have an alternative.

Is there something that can be done? perhaps you guys could lower the achievement requirement from 11 to 10? or add the Jumping Puzzle or Toypocalypse survivor, etc…

wintersday feedback hmm…

Well it wasnt bad for me (sorta done with it at this point cept the snowball pvp thingy). Certainly the best thing ever about the event is the star of gratitude…god darn thanks so much for that, also the “infinite” bell is pretty neat to have in my “stuff to fool arround with” bank tab. I most likely wont get the rebreather…but whatever, got a rare one, that will do till the next chance for a rebreather. I got harvesting tools in boxes for the next century too now… so yeap, really cant complain.

Activity wise its pretty much the same like last year.. so not much to say bout that…cept that i did the darn jumping puzzle with a charr and i could have been easily mistaken with a rabies infected mad man on a serios overdose of caffeine as i finally got my chars fat kitten into the box at the end, one could say i might have a bit of an issue to do jumping puzzles under pressure…but thats my issue, not the games. I expected a stronger reward though cause it is quite a though challenge…but whatever, done did it lol.

Overall it wasnt bad, the star alone made it worth it for me..and also the celestial trinkets at each JP for the collection are neat (lotsa ectos, made bout 5 gold with some easy jumping puzzles lol). If id need to rate it id give it a 9\10…excluding the star it would be a 7 cause i deep inside did wish for a new activity or something…but hey cant complain.

My feedback for Wintersday

1) Bell Choir – Like some others, I encounter instances (say, 30% of the time) where every key I press is doing damage despite I’m certain being pressed correctly. However, nothing that relogging into the instance or waiting for a new round wouldn’t fix.

2) Winter Wonderland JP – BIG improvements on this. Last year, it was laggy and I recall falling from visible platforms for no apparent reason. In fact, in the last few days (of Wintersday 2013), I wasn’t even able to get to the halfway mark. Stability and lag is much improved this year for me. First day I fell like crazy but with practice, I was clearing this on the first attempt everyday.

3) Grawnk – I like the Star of Gratitude item obtained at the end. Prior to this, I was simply disposing of stacks of Empyreal Shards.

4) Divinity’s Reach, Ho-ho-tron/Dolyak Event – I expected more people to be screaming “let the Skritt hit the dolyak” more. How did fail farmers miss that one? It probably wasn’t worth it. LOL

Jeez I dunno if all that mud-slinging came from the other discussions or if the people in my original one went wild… anyway: Behave people :/ You’re not 5 year olds, you can do better than that. Give your arguments, reply in neutral feedback to the others. No matter if they are for or against your cause – Stay neutral.

Back to the bugs I mentioned in my initial post – Many people just shruged it off as latency issue, I just want to chime in to tell you: It’s not. Trust me, I checked. I had wireshark profiling the network as I did a few tries and while the ping always stayed between 30 and 40ms (normal, healthy ping around here) there was the occasional every-note-damages and slide-of-doom effect. Funny enough, there were rounds where i pushed my ping to 120 via streaming and stuff (on purpose) to see if it made a difference… It actually worked that time…
However I have something to add for the bug-trackers :p That bug usually appears if you join an already running round. If you’re in the match from the beginning it usually works. Also, loosing all hp in one song resets the bug and you can do fine in the next song.

shrikes.2983:

I won’t be able to complete the adept toymaker achievement this year because i cannot do the bell choir. i am not musically inclined and try as i might, i cannot even do the very first song. It is frustrating not to have an alternative.

Is there something that can be done? perhaps you guys could lower the achievement requirement from 11 to 10? or add the Jumping Puzzle or Toypocalypse survivor, etc…

Hey shrikes, I completely agree with you about the Bell Choir. I hate it and I am no good at it. However, since there is still time to finish the Wintersday Meta I thought I’d share some tips that kind people mentioned to help:

First: you don’t need to complete songs for the meta, you need to get 500 notes correct. Yes, that’s a lot and sometimes I don’t get more than 1 or 2 notes in a song. But the rest of these tips really helped me to get a few more notes correct and over many days I eventually got the 500 notes.

-Make sure to point your camera down when you’re in the playing circle so you can accurately see where the note “balls” are.

-Try to choose the Middle Part as it usually has less notes. The Lower Part is second best.

-Turn off your sound. The only thing you need to worry about is where the note balls are.

-For some people who have a bit of lag you can’t wait for the balls to get in the actual Blue Circle as instructed. I tried pressing my buttons when the balls were in the last 20-25% of the “lane” they were coming down and got more correct notes that way.

-If there are a lot of balls coming at you, don’t panic and key-mash trying to get them all (which I sometimes do lol). Just focus on getting some of them so they will count.

Good luck!

Enjoyed it up to the first patch, after which it stopped giving any ap, and totally killed wintersday for me. Sure i could (and did for a short time) do the daily wintersday for a laural, but to be perfectly honest, it wasn’t worth the effort, and only logged on, and off in short order thereafter.

Toy apocalypse, enjoyable. But since there were complaints (complaints on forums, who would have guessed>>) from the very first toy apocalypse, of Tixx’s voice being too repetitive, it was killed off almost entirely, depriving everybody of something that was kinda nice! (but wont hold my breath to have it reinstated in manner which pleases everyone).

Snowball mayhem, a welcome come back to that. Im not a big pvp fan but once i got into it was kinda adrenaline pumping fun.

Winterday JP. Again a lot of fun, and had a lot of major sweating doing it.

However, I did these pre-patch, and looking at the feedback I am really glad I didnt wait.

Loot sucked. The only thing that was worth my time was the emp frag eater. Haven’t really bothered putting time into anything else because the rewards for time invested wasn’t worth it. I’m not an AP kitten so I’m not doing Wintersday solely for AP.

RNG inside RNG inside RNG

Why do you do this? If you are going to put this mass click spam into the game can you buy us all replacement mice and replacement arms too?

Seriously, do something about the stacks, this is terrible design both from a game and UI perspective.

Hello !

Here is my feedback for Wintersday 2014 :

1. The addition of the Wintersday reward track and the possibility thanks to that to obtain for free an unlimited finisher of Wintersday is a really good thing. I would have loved that mayhem and bellchoir count as PvP matches to progress in this reward track.

2. The daily quest with the grawl is a really nice addition. It was pleasant to play, to explore. The really bad point is the"collection" after it. The idea of the collection is good, but it must not replace quests. In this case, the children wanted us to get back their ornaments and give them back their ornaments to them, to allow them to survive. So the daily quest and the collection were good addition, but the conclusion was missing and it is terribly wrong.

3. The wintersday daily system is good. It allowed me to gain more laurels and to continue to enjoy Wintersday festivities. I really appreciate that. It is always a pleasure to participate to the Wintersday Jumping-Puzzle and to the bellchoir.

4. Concerning the reward inside the gifts, the box with box inside were a pretty bad idea. Next time, only one level of box, please.

5. Concerning the snowflakes materials, the droprate is reeeaaaally appreciable. Thanks to that I will be able to discover the crafting recipees without buying the snowflakes at high cost in the TP.

This being written, I really hope this year was an exception and that we will have more new activities to do for Wintersday 2015, like new jumping-puzzle, new tower defense, new arenas.

Other activities would be welcome, it could be for example a specific fractal dedicated to Wintersday, occuring once every fractal runs. Could be really fun.

As a note for people who have difficulties with bellchoir, do the lowerpart. This one is by far the easiest to complete.

Best regards.

Bahan

Switching the activities (JP, for exmple) to PvP was a terrible idea. Now that we’ve had this change 2 years in a row, it looks permanent though. Too bad.

At the end of Winter Wonderland, my character always moves in jerky movements. Please fix.

Also, today people in Winter Wonderland were discussing the disparity in our maximum health. Some had as low as 15K while some had as high as 24K.

As an old player who has been playing since head start, I thought I should share my feedback since i’ve been around for the last two wintersday events.

1) The meta needed more variety. The main problem was forcing players to play the choir bell, which is buggy btw (the bug where players take damage on every correct note…yeh that happened to me a few times). Players who can’t stand the choir bell should have been given optional choices, ie: snowball mayhem, having a few of the wintersday dailies count,etc. Now let’ s be real, the choir bell was never popular since 2012, so making this a mandatory part of the meta really caused a lot of discontent in your player base.

2) The Wintersday jumping puzzle: Why remove the save point? I did this one last year, but with the popping boxes where players have to rush each other to get to the top there needs to be a checkpoint.

3) I really enjoyed the scavenger hunt with the grawl. We need more of that.

4) Omg, too many boxes within boxes.

Overall, I enjoyed wintersday. The rewards this year was nice. I got my own xmas tree and a star. I think for next year maybe a little less grind. Also, if LA is still messed up next year, I think it would be more appropriate to host wintersday in Hoelbrak; it would feel less artificial.

Calanthe.3857:

At the end of Winter Wonderland, my character always moves in jerky movements. Please fix.

Also, today people in Winter Wonderland were discussing the disparity in our maximum health. Some had as low as 15K while some had as high as 24K.

Different professions have different health levels. In addition, your traits and gear stats may increase your health from the base levels, depending on how your build is set up.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Health

My feedback for Wintersday 2014:

1) Bell Choir

Mark: A

Still the most fun Wintersday activity, marred only by that annoying bug where it register all your notes as “missed”, even if you got them right. Fix that for next year, and you’ll get an “A+”.

2) Winter Wonderland

Mark: A

Another of my favourite Wintersday activities, although I’m curious as to why you removed the mid-way “save point” this year. I didn’t need it, but the save point would no doubt help a lot of players who aren’t as skilled at jumping puzzles.

Someone also made the suggestion that fall damage be turned off completely for this JP. That seems like an excellent idea to me; you did this for SAB, so it should be possible, and it would stop that annoying “falling to my death while running down a slope” latency bug.

3) Orphan Scavenger Hunt

Mark: A+

Simple, short, and fun, with a nice reward at the end. <3 the Star of Gratitude. I do question the need to time-gate the food you feed to Grawnk, but it’s only 3 days, so not that big an issue.

4) Toypocalypse

Mark: B

A pretty simple, but decently entertaining activity. Not much in the way of replayability though. I ended up playing this just to grind out the repeatable achievement. I also support the common request of allowing players to group up for this activity so they can play it with their friends.

5) Snowball Mayhem

Mark: A

A pretty well-balanced PvP activity. More strategic than it first appears. It’s a bit prone to steamrolls, but that’s not really the fault of the activity itself.

6) Tixx’s Infiniarium.

Mark: B+

Pretty simple, but entertaining. My one suggestion would be to perhaps give better rewards for completing it. There really wasn’t much incentive to replay this once you’d finished the achievements. (I will talk more about the rewards later.)

7) PvP reward track

Mark: A+

Perfectly done. The inclusion of the ability to acquire Permanent Wintersday Finishers as the final reward was an awesome surprise.

8) Ho-ho-Tron’s Donation Event

Mark: A-

I love the dialogue (“Shoo. Shoo.”), but I think the event may require a bit of tweaking because it’s obvious that a considerable amount of donations is required to get it started (at least 30g, I guessing). This means that players arriving late to Wintersday have practically no chance of getting the achievements linked to this event unless they’re willing to shell out a disproportionate amount of gold.

-continued-

-continued-

9) Achievements

Mark: B-

While the once-off achievements are just perfect, I have two areas of complaint here: the repeatable achievements, and the meta-achievement.

a) I understand that the repeatable achievements are completely optional, but I had to laugh at how ANet changed the Dailies so that “players don’t feel compelled to grind all the dailies every day”, and in the very same update, introduce a number of time-limited achievements that require a large amount of grinding. I mean, c’mon, really??

In previous years, the repeatable Wintersday achievements were also only repeatable 3 times. This year it was 5, requiring considerably more grinding. Snowball Mayhem also got bumped up from 10 matches for 1 tier, to 30 matches for 1 tier. Please consider scaling back the requirements to what they were in Wintersday 2013. They were much more reasonable, and more in line with your stated approach in reducing the player perception of required grinding.

b) In previous Wintersdays (and holiday events), players had the option of progressing the meta-achievement by doing a combination of the once-off achievements, plus dailies. This was removed for Wintersday 2014, and to make matters worse, you needed to complete ALL the achievements to complete the meta. This meant that players who were either not comfortable with, or not able to do, certain activities were locked out of completing the meta-achievement altogether. I feel that this is a really bad move and turns away from the “play how you want” philosophy espoused by ANet.

Please return to the old system of completing the meta-achievement for future festivals. That way, dedicated AP hunters like myself can get the meta-achievement faster if we do everything, but players who aren’t can still reach the finish line simply by devoting a little more time every day doing the dailies.

10) Rewards

Mark: C+

To be honest, I felt that you really messed up with the rewards for this Wintersday, ANet. It’s not that we didn’t like the new Wintersday stuff (we do!), but you forgot the lessons you learnt from Halloween 2014 and went right back to locking all of the good stuff behind onerous RNG.

The various Gifts have too broad a range of rewards, with the result that tons of unwanted goods (like Tonics and Toy weapon skins) got created in the process of players attempting to get the rare stuff they really wanted. Even with the new MF recipes you’ve introduced, the “trash loot” is accumulating on the TP faster than it can be gotten rid of.

It would have been better if the Gifts had a much tighter loot table. For example, let’s say that each Gift drops:

- 1-10 Beautiful Clothes (provides a minor gold sink with salvaging required, creates cloth scraps to help ease the general shortage for cloth.)
- 1-10 random Snowflakes OR 1-3 random salvage materials OR 1-5 random junk items
- 1 secondary wrapped gift, such as a Bottle-Shaped Present, Unsafe Gift, a box containing snowflakes, or rarely one of the Exotic Gifts (similar to the ones from the PvP reward track, that allow you to choose precisely what gift you want).

Next, expand the offerings of the Wintersday merchants so that a lot of the rare goodies (including the Grenth/Dwayna recipes) can be exchanged for a ton of the unwanted stuff. For example, maybe the Mariner’s Oilcloth Bag can be obtained for 250 Ugly Wool Sweaters.

This was the approach you used back in Halloween 2014, and it worked EXTREMELY well. Players had the ability to choose exactly what reward they wanted, and players who didn’t like any of the offerings could always just sell the tokens (candy corn, skulls etc.) and pocket the gold instead.

While the meta was a little frustrating, however the time to do it in is so lengthy that any complaints should just be ignored other than the few buggy / convenience complaints, ones that I would like to mention :

1. Falling damage bug still exists and Wintersday puzzle was crap with that bug, NOT fun. Same thing for that weird lag bug where its like your character is falling but isn’t, using a movement skill breaks you out of it.

2. Free play in Bell choir.

3. The goodies to be bought with clothes was completely and utterly useless for 99% of the playerbase.

That is pretty much the only real gripes I have other than the Wintersday “grind” that wasn’t a problem with such a long window to do it in.

Well I know as I can’t get anywhere with Bell Choir or the JP. I’m going to be stuck on 10/11 till event ends. It’s a real shame they did not add more options for the Wintersday Daily that added credit towards the overall event.

I wish they had kept the option to do Wintersday dailies and have them go towards the meta. That way I could skip the ones I disliked or have trouble with while still progressing.

If they felt that was too easy, then maybe require several days worth of Wintersday dailies for one meta point. That way people who are having trouble in one area can still get the meta while giving extra reasons for people to do those dailies.

To misquote Monty Python: The Holidays are supposed to be a happy occasion. Let’s not bicker and argue about who can do what.

Wintersday Feedback:

1) Bell choir being laggy and buggy, also when you teleport out it sometimes automatically teleports you back in

2) JP was good, minus the stated fall-damage glitch

3) Loot was horrible. At least the consumables (candy canes) from gw1 that we got so many of were extremely useful. I also still use a lot of the consumables from halloween just for the MF boost. Overall, most of my wintersday loot was instantly trashed (or sold at 2c each). Although I have a lifetime supply of harvesting tools now which I guess is cool. Suggestion: Add a useful consumable (food or utility), even if we get it in massive quantities at least it will be something we can look at in our inventory in July and say “hey I’m glad I participated in wintersday because I still use these”

4) Just didn’t seem like there was much at all to do. We need some sort of dynamic events, or a nice finale or something. I don’t know, I just got bored really fast. I know it was a rehashed wintersday but overall I just feel it needs some more content.

5) Grawnk was great, took a couple of days but we got a pretty cool reward for it. Thank you very much for that!

6) Weapon Skins—Everything new is gem store, but drops or completing extensive events are SO much more fulfilling for me. Even if it was a tiny chance.

Add vendor value to snowflakes and the runes and sigils we get from Wintersday gifts. The runes and sigils do sell in the TP but minor and superior go for only a few copper if anything. I had to discard 8 stacks of Tiny Snowflakes I had listed in the TP for 9 days because they wouldn’t sell, and that was the absolute minimum 2 copper listing price. I suppose I could just toss them into the mystic forge and upgrade them to the next tier, and the next, and so on, but philosopher’s stones cost skill points only and I would eventually be left with no skill points and a ton of Tiny Snowflakes I keep getting from the gifts. Besides I already have 1500 Flawless Snowflakes in my material storage (I’ve purchased max collection storage expanders from the gem shop).

I really, but really can’t understand how do people find choir hard… I can’t do hard perfectly, I make mistakes on medium sometimes… But guys common… ON EASY YOU NEED TO HIT 1-2 NOTES to get daily done, you can basically just focus on hitting one button during whole song.
And I rly find that choir relaxing experience, it’s a rly good mini game, that I found rly enjoyable after I learned how to play.
It’s not that hard guys… Instead of complaining just do a bit of hard work. And you will enjoy it later.
Also, about Jp. I am not actually good at jps . I played 2 evenings in a row for about hour and a half. And finally made it. It felt so good after that hard work. After that every time I tried it was easier and easier. Now I can do 10 easily in a single event. And best part is I got better at Jp generally… I did some that I couldn’t do before(like skipping stones)

I am very surprised that the massive oversupply of Tiny Snowflakes has not been corrected. Make them 1 copper each to vendors at least so tons of people are not throwing them out. With 10 million of them in the Trading Post they probably will not be worth anything for a very long time thus the benefit of using the winterday gathering tools is a disappointing waste.

The things you set to be purchased with wool items was set up and clearly not adjusted when you made the same items common drops and thus not worth in some cases 1/100 of their wool item cost. Then nothing was added to be purchased that was not a common drops.

You should have tried to model these items in the TP before the event. But at least someone should have been monitoring the TP for the item prices and way before they dropped to worthless do something about it. In example make the item sellable to NPC vendors, or drastically lower drop rate, add things to use large quanities of the item on in example cold drink food items worth useable at 80 as buffs that work with 1 Flawless and different levels of other snowflakes as you go down the tiers to 100 Tiny for the same item.

Forging 10 of each of the tier 2,3,4 and 5 snowflakes it takes forever to work though a 250 stack of each type of snowflake as the giant wintersday presents give you more.

Making the tonics turn into snowflakes was clearly an idea that was botched when you made the snowflake drop rate so high that snowflakes are worthless at the bottom two tiers. And very cheap except the tier 5 flakes.

It seams like you only did half the job ran out of time to make each piece fit then gave up on fixing any of it while it the event is underway.

Anytime you have a reward that becomes worthless like Tiny Snowflakes you both made a major error especially when you don’t fix it fast. It also make ARNET look amateurish. Just because the wars between departments for programers tend to make special stuff like this neglected does not excuse you fight that natural trend and make sure programing hours go to make current content underway work well even if you have to announce a delay in next release.

I absolutely loved the Wintersday content, primarily the Winter Wonderland jumping puzzle and the Bell Choir. I haven’t logged in this much in a long time.

The fact that they are challenging is why I like them, please resist any urge to nerf them in the future!

Astral Projections.7320:

I wish they had kept the option to do Wintersday dailies and have them go towards the meta. That way I could skip the ones I disliked or have trouble with while still progressing.

If they felt that was too easy, then maybe require several days worth of Wintersday dailies for one meta point. That way people who are having trouble in one area can still get the meta while giving extra reasons for people to do those dailies.

To misquote Monty Python: The Holidays are supposed to be a happy occasion. Let’s not bicker and argue about who can do what.

Yeah, it was an unpleasant surprise to find the strict requirement and no daily. I just got the Wintersday tree. I didn’t go to the bell choir or JP which I really like since I ended up not even wanting to play the Wintersday stuff.

Achievements/Meta/Dailies — I myself had no problems with them, but I would’ve liked to see either one of these options for the meta:
1) Daily Counting towards a tick of the Meta
2) More options, allowing some choice in what you do for the meta
When we were still in LS1, I myself enjoyed having the option to pick how I completed the meta. Wintersday has so much to do and people excel at various activities. What about adding some Snowball PvP Activity to the mix? (I didn’t even bother playing, though I like the game, because there was no real reason to do it)

I also would like if the dailies rotated options (if it’s coming back next year), break up the monotony a bit. Daily Tixx Infini, Daily Snowball PvP, Doly Escort, ect. ect.

Bell Choir — Was a little buggy this year. If you joined mid game, you got a bug where the notes weren’t counted, correct or not. If you survived you’d be rewarded with points for 100% completion (but it wouldn’t count) and still be unable to hit notes. The only way to remedy this: join a game just starting, quickly leave the stage and hope you can get back on stage to participate, fail and wait for the next song.
Another thing that occasionally happened was that when the game was finished, it wouldn’t send me to a new bell choir, it’d say the game was full (or something) forcing me to exit and rejoin the activity.

I think free play should be removed or shortened, most people leave to requeue, meaning people trying to get in for a game are put in games that have 3 mins left and no songs to play. (Or at the very least, make it so a person is less likely to join a game that’s pretty much finished)

JP Not much to say, except I hear the candy cane slope can cause fall damage, which really screws up a run.
Probably just me, but I really don’t see why the snowflakes/candycanes (first half) need to melt with the JP being switched from a race like mad king’s to a free for all.

Tixx’s Infinirarium — It’s fun, but I don’t feel the dungeon has a point beyond achievements. Perhaps if there was a set of interesting items for the dungeon with its own unique loot table after finishing. Maybe bring back glue, stuffing, frames and cogs with low chance to drop (I don’t know if glue or stuffing still drops this year, considering I could turn in them in for presents).

Toypocalypse — Aside from the bug that would have you join at the end of the game (I think it was fixed though), not much to say.

Grawnk/Orphans — Nothing much to say, enjoyed it. Liked the ‘quests’ and rewards.

Ho-Ho Tron — Nothing much to say, but I do notice the defense event doesn’t run much now, meaning people who are late to the party are going to to be waiting for a while to get achievements.

Snowball PvP — Didn’t play this year, haven’t bothered. Can’t comment on it.

Rewards — I have never felt there was anything interesting from the vendors. I get tons of sweaters, socks and hats for nothing. The only nice thing are the prettier versions that salvage into cloth and then into them.
Weapons (the wooden/princess wands/candy cane mace/whatever) saturated the market with the first Wintersday, they barely sell for anything and I delete them every time they drop. I always hope I don’t get them. They’re junk (I have them all already).
Wintersday gifts… for the love of god… where do I begin? The clicking… it was a lot of clicking last year, it’s A LOT more clicking this year. Please just cut the ‘middle man’ and remove the boxes within boxes at least. Just let runes, sigils, tonics, clothes drop out of the boxes. I really only want to click luck that drops. It hurts my hand to open all the boxes, selecting runes/sigils, getting luck, salvaging. It’s too much. And again, most of the loot is junk worthy. You get so much, everything that comes out of those boxes is worth nothing. I delete a lot of the stuff that even pops out.

Other The doors that send you to the activities are buggy. Sometimes after you leave, you get instantly ported back in to the activity because you’re too close to the door.

I think that’s it.

I am not in the habit of posting more than necessary on a single topic, but this is the exception due to a certain amount of growing frustration.

The total lack of de-bugging over the winterday period has had be scratching my head as to why? I realize that staff need holidays like everyone else. However that has to be balanced with the brutal fact that GW2 is a business. If you ignore the bugs over the Christmas period you risk the player base granting you the same favor.

We are now into the 9th day of the new year with no sign of any de-bug patches, which is more then likely be rolled out on the 13th with the new LS.

(and before any white knights come galloping in with ‘you dont know how hard it is to de-bug’ I am sure it is. But then I am not the one being paid to do just that, with all due respect!)