Guild Wars 2

As I dc’d after 2 hours or so of the final event, whilst driving the ancient karka back to the lair, and couldn’t log back in, i.e. not probably at the chest opening phase of the final event, I am assuming, like many others that the only reward/memory I will have this event will be the repair bill …. and Noll sat on the ground and only interacting by saying “excelsior!” …. not much of a reccommendation I’m afraid. I’m rather glad my friend did not take up the free weekend invite.

Asum.4960:

Do you know what made you big as company? Why people used to love you?
Because GW was about skill, fairness, hard work and fun.

Not about RNG’s devaluing months of playtime.
There were people earning 600+ Gold in the event.

(…)

It’s ridiculous that some random drops devaluate MONTHS of playing, and even farming, and while being happy for my guild mates and co. who earned hundreds of gold, i feel highly punished for playing the game since the first beta.
Not because something was taken from me, but because what i was working towards to since the day i started the game (and checked the armors) was devaluated immensely, to a point where i don’t even know if i want to put any more work into the game.

this. You perfectly describe what I feel right now.

Technical difficulties are annoying, and should not happen with Anet’s experience.
But kitten happens, whatever. People can forgive that (I know I have).

But this ?! I mean… Yesterday’s ridiculous precursor’s droprate was so high that some people playing for a week are now richer that I will probably ever be.
I could not play due to constant d/c, and could not hope for such loot.

Where is the fairness ? Where is the Guild Wars I fell in love with ?
The RNG is this game is a little too frustrating for my taste.

edit : cleaned up a little

I love these kinda of events and i do believe its a strong point of Gw2.

However i think a capital error was maded in this event. Making the invite a friend together at the same time. Tripled the population and clearly the servers couldnt handle it. Making allready players unhappy and Possible future players unimpressed.

Cant help to notice that arenanet was relentless during this event. Always updating the tweeter and the forums, And making new builds each day to fix the bugs. Only shows me that this company care about their product. And they should, since they got a gem here.

On a recommendation note to Anet:
Dont fall into the error of trying to catter everyone. You will fail. Think of your company as a person. Every person has someone that hates you, no matter what u do.
Just keep doing what u do. Be yourself and worry not, Many love you just the way u are.

The new zone has some neat geography. The mobs every 10 feet make it too much of a hassle to just go freeform exploring to appreciate it, sadly.

The broken quest steps from Phase 1 were a disappointment, as was the fact that the problems were in part just dismissed since they didn’t matter for Phase 2+. Some of us actually like doing questy things more than killy things; I was really disappointed I didn’t get to see the end of Miyani’s scavenger hunt. Still, I got further in the quests in this event than I did at Halloween, where I can’t even begin to speculate whether it was bugs or griefers or just the spamminesss of Costume Brawl in the way that was making things just not work. So, this was an improvement, sadly.

I like playing GW2, but my life doesn’t revolve around it, and I wasn’t willing to fit my schedule to it, either; I expected to miss out on everything that happened only once at noon, and while it wasn’t optimal, I was ok with that.

Still, the decision to do things just once at peak population felt kind of like “kitten the freeloading 47% that can’t be bothered to make the effort to show up at that time”.

I was pleasantly surprised to find about the unintentional ongoing events in overflow later Sunday evening and managed to get in on one (and hopefully I got others in too). I think this could be a model for how to handle these going forward—have the event repeat periodically in instances over the course of a day or so.

A truly one-time event is a neat concept, but it’s just a game, which people play for enjoyment, and you need to compromise to that end; especially when you’re giving nice loot. I’m not much of a gearkitten and really didn’t care about most of what I got, but the guaranteed 20-slot box was a nice reward that I might have been a little miffed to miss out on, so I can only imagine more typical players’ reactions to missing out on the drop; it really should be a player’s ability in the game that determines whether they get a chance at that loot, not externalities such as real-world scheduling issues.

Still, overall a nice try… Do keep on trying.

asobinin.5467:

Galen Grey.4709:

HiSaZuL.2843:

free?… i clearly remember paying for this game….
also… they can take this kind of content and shove it.

You’re kidding right? short for eve online dont know of any other MMO that gives this amount of content without specifically charging for it as an expansion and in case of eve you’re paying the subscription for that!

But hey if the bugs bother you so much why dont you ignore the content for a week or two until its ironed out! guess what you’d still be getting more then you get in other MMOs!

Lol so kitten cute. Ignoring the content for a week or two until bugs are ironed out? You do know that this content was an “once in a life time” event that only spawned over 3 days right? And it seems like Phase 1 is still bugged out. As if Anet’s going to take care of the bug either way. They just closed it so they don’t have to work on a fix anymore. How the hell are we supposed to wait till bugs are ironed out? Those who were unlucky can’t finish the content anymore. Not that we have the desire to do so anymore after this debacle.

Happy player voices actually means nothing. Anet should be listening to the frustrated group so they can improve on what went wrong. There were many unhappy players from the Halloween event, and it just seems Anet haven’t listened well from how this event turned out.

Appreciations are given where it’s due. Despite being bug ridden, GW2 is a great game so props for that. As for this event? Not so much. Props to the art team for bringing great visuals. Who ever wrote the event authoring tool needs a boot however, as well as the kitten buggy overflow servers. It’s just driving your player base mad. I’m safe to say that the player base is happy with GW2, but when it comes to events, I think the majority of the player base is just disappointed and frustrated. Something needs to be done. 2 failed events in a row only in a 3 months span is not a good way to start a budding MMO.

Then just dont ignore it! you’re free to do as you please! Cant say for your server but for mine I managed to do all 3 phases with some persistance!

There is a reason why no one does all this content this fast! its hard to do, things of these scale probably require a month just to test everything properly! I am sure for them is all a learning process but it can only be a learning process if they actually get to do it in the first place!

I like everyone else would love if everything works perfectly and I too hope we’ll get there at some point and I am sure they will as they iron out the issues but yes I think its unfair to label these events a complete failure or an utter disappointement when there is so much great value to be had from them! I personally enjoyed both halloween and this event very much! Yes had issues, couldnt complete phase 1 on the first day! Yes undoubtly experiance would have been much better had all went smooth on the first go but overall it still many times better then having no content at all dont you think ?

Rellik and Asum, you put that into words a lot better than i could have

I’ve also been playing since the beta tests, and while i’ve had some fun getting my exotic gear, i’ve also wanted to work towards something cool and rare—not even a legendary, like, maybe a named exotic or an endless tonic

In the period of time the game’s been out, i’ve completed dungeons and farmed plinx and, above all, actually friggin played! And now, missing this one event puts me so far behind everyone else i might as well not even try :T

Not to mention that my client crashes enough that i can’t even play the new dungeon! My usual group is at level 14 and I’m at FOUR, so when it’s finally fixed and i want to play the -most rewarding content- with them, i have to drag them down to my level just because i have client issues

My experience on the lost shore weekend:

P1 – I logged into an event so laggy that is was literally impossible to play. I held out for a while and changed overflow servers, so I finally managed to find an instance where fluid gameplay was possible rather than a 1-action-every-30 secs slideshow. Not impressed.

Then tried to do the quest chain which worked up to Noll and stopped dead in its tracks due to him bugging out.

P2 – missed most of it due to preferring RL activity over buggy event mechanics.

P3 – had a look at what went on on the new island. The event chain was at the stage where you had to escort a guy down that mountain. Only again it had bugged out, NPC was not moving anymore. So I called it quits and went to bed.

Now today I read on the forums that people who were lucky enough to be able to complete the event chain got nice rewards, up to precursors. That coupled with the event being limited to one day makes me seriously question the judgement of the developers. Do you really think it is a good idea to basically force people to chose between social RL weekend activities or your not very well implemented one-time event? GW2 prides itself on not forcing a gaming schedule on its players, like so many other big MMOs do. But this one-time event strategy does just that, additionally to excluding a big part of your player base which happens to either live in the wrong timezone or have other commitments. Overall this experience certainly does not increase my desire to play your game, rather the opposite.

Yea its really frustrating to the point you dont wanna play anymore ( which probably wont happen, but its how you feel). I couldnt play longer than 2 hours into the event when i had to leave. When i turned online today at 8 in the morning, i couldnt believe what my guildies told me.

Not only has been the rewards rediculous, it was ALSO possible to freaking repeat the events with your alts till 7:30. In 9 hours, on which i wasnt able to play, they got 3-6 20 slot bags, a few precursors and lots of ectos. WOW!!! 9 hours out of the game put me behind for ages….

I just want to say that the Halloween event was pretty cool. I liked it a lot.

This event was all around horrible. I like the idea behind it and think it’s really cool to do an event around new content release instead of just throwing it up there, but you guys are just leaving waaay too much room for error and frustration.

In the future if you would try to avoid the following things, I guarantee that it will run so much better:

1) Do not make events where you have to be there for a small frame of time to get something good. Too many people have to work, etc and miss out. At least give an entire day where the event will cycle on a regular basis, otherwise make sure it doesn’t award anything special, and make that abundantly clear BEFOREHAND.

2) Do not have multi-part event quests where the event lasts multiple days and you have to finish the quests on a specific day or you get locked out. Most people do not have time to spend each day of the event doing multiple aspects, and thus it becomes a chore trying to get everything done, and inevitably people won’t realize that they only have a short window to do it. If you want to advance each phase by changing the world, fine, but still allow an alternate method to achieve the same awards until the end of the event series.

3) Let people know roughly what type of awards will be awarded for the events Beforehand, so if they don’t have time to do them, they don’t feel they have to because they are going to miss out on some mysterious uber award. Otherwise people go out of their way to show up and end up disappointed with whatever actual award that’s given, as it’ll never live up to expectations now that they went through such a hassle to be there. This happens often enough, they quit playing period.

4) Let people know beforehand if the events have separate rewards or if you have to complete each phase to get an ending reward. So many of my friends (including my wife) didn’t have much interest in this event because they knew they would be working during the last event, so they didn’t bother much with any of it. Others I knew thought you had to complete phase 1 to do phase 2, and phase 2 to do phase 3. So when phase 1 bugged, they just passed on the whole event.

5) Please for the love of God stop with all the mystery crap. Surprises are good to an extent, but there was waaay too little information provided on what was going on and where you were supposed to be. We should have known exactly where to go for each new phase, well before the event started, and without having to read it on twitter.

Thank you,

Did the event for 2 and a half hours just to be disconnected right at the end and not be able to log back in so ended up not being able to get the chest, never been so frustrated playing a game before. I want my reward for all my hard work.

here’s my two cents:
It was boring, repetitive and made me lose a little interest in guild wars 2.
I’m not gonna be butthurt about the loot or the starting time for the events.
I didn’t get the best loot and not the worst. The events started here (Sweden) 21:00/9PM local time on a weekend which I think was okay.
Thing is they can never make everyone happy, not the way they’re doing the events now.
I was just lucky to be where I am and to receive any loot at all it seems. But to be honest, at the end, I really didn’t care… I really didn’t, I just wanted to get the event out of the way.

Here’s the good parts:
The difficulty of the mobs pre-boss was excellent. Not too easy and not to hard. You need to pay attention and can’t just stand and swing in front of it.
Jumping puzzles those were a really nice addition, especially the skipping stones.
Fractals

Here’s why I thought it was boring:
Lag: To be fair, I only experienced MASSIVE lag at day 1 of the lost shores, and moderate lag at the ancient on day 3.
No achievement/clearing reward: You do not seem to count the lost shores as a regular area, which in my opinion is a bit disappointing.
Last event: mixed feelings, it was so boring me and my friends tried to make the best out of the situation;
making fun of how we were supposed to drive the ancient away,
like drop a big tree on it
use geysers as cannons; load it with small stones to launch a big one.
Fail with the landslide which didn’t even touch the ancient but successfully scared it away. Shoo.
If you were in the same overflow as me and my friends you could probably spot us lying under the karkas beaten to death just cheering everyone on after rushing it for funsies.
Kill all the reinforcements I mean really? One time’s fair but come on… boring as hell.
All the ninja karkas in the cave. First we see nothing then everyone falls over not knowing what hit them.
ALL OF THE KARKAS was apparently in the cave. Maybe you had a plan, maybe you just spammed a lot of karkas to make us die a lot and think that “wow, this is really difficult”. I don’t know, but it wasn’t fun or exciting in any way or form.
Minor things Like noll, citizens!! spam etc. Good thing you prolonged that though.

I feel bad for the people that didn’t have any friends to play with in this event.
The people I invited that took part in this event will never buy the game, they were extremely interested in this game before lost shores and I felt like a kitten during the time we played after telling them how fun this game is. I can only imagine how many potential customers you’ve scared away with this event.
What’s done is done and I really really hope you learn from it. I want to like this game, this game is fun, but you’re starting to make it anti-fun.

Now please, go and fix orr before the next event : (

Edit: And please don’t use the same testers for the next event…

Despite a busy family life with three kids, I attended the first event, (DC’d a few times, extremely laggy for all my guild members involved) and was able to complete phase II as well. Then, when I wanted to enter phase III, I couldn’t because an NPC (Myani) didn’t allow me to start phase III.

I really wanted to complete this event. But come on. An NPC doesn’t have a conversation bubble, so I can’t complete the event? What the heck is that? A let down, and a complete waste of my time on an event which, despite the lag and bugs I wanted to complete.

And now, in this thread, I read that I didn’t even have to complete the previous steps (is that right?) to participate in the final event, which I really wanted to.

Very, very disappointed.

Well i dont get what all the whining was about.

Sure, i agree that the kill add phase was tedious, and the lag in the middle part was annoying, but the event had a really epic feel to it. I really enjoyed it. And of course, the chest was awesome

Looking forward to more such events in the future.

I made a suggestion on the suggestions forums to make an npc which makes it possible to replay such events for big groups like 20 people… in addition to the 5 people dungeons we have at the moment.

Of course different amount of mobs and rewards(can’t give that expensive stuff all the time).

But then at least people could see what it felt like to play in the event(and maybe better without lag).

Also I hope for all you guys that did not get to open the chest that support can help you soon. I was able to open the chest. Had no luck with precursor but I my best bags were 15 slot and I do not have that much gold… have been leveling the other char slots instead of farming with my first level 80 main. Still a good reward for me but not acceptable that others did not get anything when they played for almost 3 hours. They need to fix this.

After playing the events for 3 hours I was unable to loot the chest. That was really disappointing. I made a ticket but I have no high hopes of a response.
I know it is just a game, but after spending 3 hours of my time (and a angry husband) I felt really let down.

I have to say that I was disappointed with the Lost Shores weekend as a whole.
As with a great many others I waited patiently for the event to start on Friday. Like many others I was treated with a cutscene that began the weekend long event and, like many others, I suffered lag issues almost instantly afterwards quickly followed by disconnection from the game. When I finally managed to log back on I had to contend with being hit and constantly killed by enemies I couldn’t see and a 2 to 30 second skill skill activation delay from the point of pressing the relevant skill key / icon which pretty much killed any enjoyment of the event.
Once the initial event was out of the way I didn’t bother with the others that night as I did not want a repeat performance of lag-outs and enemies I couldn’t see.
I did however give the Fractals of the Mists a go along with a guild team and if I’m honest we had a good time, although there were some points that quickly arose:

1) Those Fractals need an armour repair merchant, or you allow the players to come back into the staging area to repair before continuing to the next fractal.

2) Team members should have the option to get back into the Fractal in the event of a disconnect. (One of our number got disconnected during our third Fractal that evening (although not in a row) and could not get back in without us quiting out first.

3) The Dredge mining power suit boss is grossly overpowered and needs fixing. (We found it impossible to deal enough damage, even after pouring molten slag over it, before it hunkered down and healed itself back up to full health.)
Now I will admit that several factors may have come into play here. The first being that since we did not really know what was expected of us our profession and/or skill selection may not have been up to the task. However, seeing as you have gone out of your way to state that every profession can contribute in some way to any situation I really can’t see how this should be any different. The other factor to consider was that, as mentioned above, one of our number had been disconnected and so we were player down. That being said there should have been sufficient flexibility to allow for that eventuality.

On Sunday evening, as it was the final event of the weekend I decided to give it a try in the hope that some of the earlier lag issues had been rectified.

Wrong!.

After two minutes of lag delay and disconnects I pretty much said “Sod this for a laugh” and left to level up another character elsewhere, rather than get frustrated and angry over an event. (although I continued to experience lag and disconnects throughout the remainder of the evening albeit not as often.) I’m kind of glad that I did leave since if any of the previous posts are anything to go by I probably would have suffered like that for over two hours followed by bitter anger and resentment at being disconnected at the end with no chest reward.

Come on Anet. It’s been what, 3 months since GW2 went live?
These sorts of issues should have been ironed out by now. The huge lag issues experienced when GW2 went live was to be expected as it could be put down to teething problems and huge interest and so it could be forgiven. But the halloween drama should have given a clue that if you insist on ‘one time only’ events, which in the case of Halloween turned out to be just a cutscene, then you are going to need to have the server power to deal with the huge amount of players that will want to be there. Either that or you revert to the tried and tested method of repeating events every three hours as in GW1, which allowed everyone the opportunity to be able to join in at a time convenient to them and as a result prevented lag situations. This would be my preferred method of handling events as not once did I experience a disconnect issue in GW1 and rarely experienced lag during an event such as Halloween.

Don’t get me wrong I love GW2, we all do. But do you honestly think it’s right that players are pretty much forced to do something else rather than participate in the special events simply because of lag and disconnects through no fault of their own?

Please sort it out as it cannot keep going on like this.
Either bring in the extra server power needed to cope with the intense player population (and then some,) or revert to the tried and tested and I suspect much preferred repeatable events throughout the day.

I really like the new content. Its simply amazing. The fractal dungeon is stunning, atmosphere and graphics both, the mechanics had a lot of variety and I think I will play this very often.
The Lost Shore is very pretty. I would’ve liked it a little bit larger, but the design is cool and something different. I hope there will be some nice events and the loot drops will be adjusted, because just now the veterans never dropped anything for me. I also liked the two jumping puzzles. For monsters that have come from underwater I missed more underwater content on the island.

The events… well, they didn’t do it very much for me. Phase 1 was funny despite the lags although a little tedious and I had hoped for more help from the lions Arch citizens, but the rewards for Noll etc. was really small (I think only 1 karma bottle). I liked the story, that was good, but I had hoped for a little more meaningful reward, maybe an achievement. I experienced some minor bugs there, too, but got around it pretty quickly through overflow servers.
Phase 2. I was a little bit confused, because I thought you would need the map from Phase 1, but apparantly we didn’t. The event in Lions Arch didn’t start on our server quickly enough and I was on the island as soon as possible. It was fun to discover the shores and set up camp. But it felt a little rushed. I missed some events to fortify the camps maybe and stuff like that.
Phase 3. Yeah… the Karka Veterans stomped over me so much I lost count. I liked the event stuff with the tree and the rocks, that was good, but the reinforcement part was painful, it was too long. I realize you have to keep a one-time event long so that many players can catch up, but that was not the way to do it. I had moderate lags and 1 freeze loadscreen, but I was able to log in and finish the event, plus rewards. I really liked the big reward and I don’t understand the hate towards people which were luckier than others. I didn’t get a precursor, but I cheered for everyone who did. Only rare and exotic loot was pretty sweet. At least nobody whined about only blue and green crap.
And why did you thought it was a good idea to have free trial during such an event? Shouldn’t a trial help to experience the normal game? Set up a new character, do some of the day to day stuff?

What I miss was mostly more information from you guys. The phases were not tied together very well and we didn’t know where the event phase 3 started until the very last minute. I also missed Konsortium content. The new lost shore weapon skins are not very pretty in my opinion. Why did you not use the opportunity and give us some holiday resort items. Maybe bathing suit skins, maybe a sunshade or towel. Where were the souvenirs?

Now that the weekend is over, I’d like to roll together some thoughts on the event as a whole.

First off, making one-time quests without testing them properly first ends up with a very bad first impression amongst players.
Friday night’s event in Lion’s arch is the first such example.
First off, very few people were able to get in to their home district. Not a major hassle, but indicative of server load and I’ll expand on this later.

Next, when the event itself started, the karka invasion, GW2’s unique lag errors kicked in.
With so many people in one place skills wouldn’t activate, player and enemy culling crapped out resulting in players being killed by invisible enemies frequently and event scaling went through the roof, with normal enemies being as tough as veterans, veterans as tough as champions, etc.

After this finished, we were not able to visit the new area which the weekend was supposed to be about. What WAS available was the Fractal of the Mists dungeon and the scavenger hunt.
Fractals seem enjoyable, but grouping problems are ruining many players’ enjoyment, and of course there’s the controversy of grind and gear tiers, both of which many will claim are contrary to the original much referenced manifesto. However, complaints have been expanded on elsewhere on the forum, so I won’t comment here other than to say I think it’s an insanely bad idea on ArenaNet’s behalf.

The scavenger hunt was a complete shambles. This really should have been tested more extensively prior to release, as it merely served to increase frustration. Players who were already in a bad mood thanks to other things in the event had their aggravation compounded.
Even the communication surrounding the scavenger hunt was of poor quality. Messages from developers were unclear and many players were left confused and worried that they might not be able to complete the quest.
Not that they should have worried mind you; the reward was cursory to say the least.

Of course, the development team’s communication as a whole leaves a lot to be desired.
The continued reliance on third party mediums such as Twitter and Facebook to deliver important messages rather than the game launcher or official forums is not a good decision to have made. Not everybody who plays the game uses these services, yet everyone sees the launcher, and your forums are an official means of communication.

On Saturday, Southsun Cove was finally opened to the public. This was actually probably the smoothest part of the weekend, with few problems experienced and the area behaving as intended. I’m a little worried about the sparsity of events and a lack of monster variety, with a heavy over-reliance on the karka, but overall, pretty good with two very nice jumping puzzles. Stepping Stones captures some of the spirit of the Mad King’s Clock Tower, which is nice, while Under New Management is a lot more relaxed.

However, any goodwill you gained from this one glimmer of competence was soon shattered with the one-time event last night.
Firstly, there was a lot of confusion surrounding where we actually needed to be.
Secondly, again with a massive influx of players, few were able to play on their home servers, with the majority ending up in overflows.
And once again, although much more painfully this time, due to overpopulation the above mentioned effects of lag severely hampered the event, making it a 3 hour slog with little to no enjoyment to be had. Monsters connected to the event had ridiculously inflated health pools, telegraphed attacks were impossible to avoid thanks to input lag resulting in mass wipes, many monsters weren’t visible until you’d been killed by them, and disconnects were frequent.

Fortunately, I didn’t get disconnected at all, but every other one of my party members did, with two not being able to rejoin us in our particular overflow.
One team member gave up half-way through due to it being almost completely unplayable, and heartbreakingly, one team-member got disconnected right before the final boss battle, meaning when she finally got back on she didn’t receive any reward. The only reward she had was an enormous armour repair bill.

And as this was a one-time event, she had no opportunity to repeat it, although I doubt she would have been able to seeing as it finished at 11PM GMT on our overflow.

In closing, I would implore ArenaNet to rethink these one-time events.

One, make timing based on the geographical location of the server. Sure, this means things may get spoiled, but more people would be able to attend the event and not feel left out.

Two, set the player limit for zones connected to one-time events a LOT lower than it is currently set. While I appreciate what you’re trying to strive for, and admire the spectacle you’re trying to create, your technology obviously isn’t capable of accommodating your vision.

Three, I know this has been mentioned a lot, but seriously consider rolling out a test server to test these events on. Slap testers with NDAs if you have to, but rolling out buggy, unfinished events does not reflect well on your competence.

Four, and this is personal opinion but reflects a lot of the community’s opinion, roll back the new gear tier, leaving exotic stats as the top. You’re going to lose a lot of players if you don’t.

Five, consider moving the entrance to Fractal of the Mists away from Lion’s Arch.
Thanks to dungeon runners, few will ever be able to access the Lion’s Arch of their home server reliably ever again. Move the portal to Southsun Cove or somewhere equally as accessible.

And six?
Compensate those who partook in the event but received nothing thanks to your network code kicking them at the very last minute.

Overall, if I were to grade your work for this event, I would say that while your ambitions were big, you failed to deliver a satisfactory experience. Must try harder.

Final event: Good points – the difficulty level was set right. I was with a group that got completely wiped a few times so it meant that you had to concentrate and work out what was going on. It also meant that folks had to watch out for one another. I also thought the idea behind the final event was cool (set explosives in a hive area and then drive the “ancient” into your trap).

Not so good points: Would have been nice to play the event with my husband but we couldn’t get onto our “home” server and didn’t end up in the same overflow. Suffered d/c early on and came back into a different overflow so only got a silver for the “setting the explosives” bit. That wasn’t too bad but then towards the end of the event (after about 2.5 hrs) I had another d/c and couldn’t get back into an active event. I know that Arenanet are working on getting the rewards to the folks who were affected by the d/c but it was really disappointing not to get to finish the event with the overflow group I was in. Somehow, only seeing the ancient as a dried up husk in the cave and not being there to shoot “woot” as we killed it, was a let down. And, yes, I appreciate it’s only a game, and at my age (55) I maybe shouldn’t get quite such a kick out of destroying an Ancient Karka …. but I do …. and I like shouting “woot” after an epic battle.

And last: rewards must not be SO valuable! ><

I’m sorry Anet, but I found Lost Shores unplayable, if you want my reasons why you need only look at your Facebook page and see the 90% negative comments under your updates. The enemies were OP, especially considering you were inviting in new players, the events bugged to the point that I just gave up on being able to follow the “questline”. I experienced lag all across the maps, I broke more peices of armor than I did in Fractals. (Fractals is excellent, don’t touch that). There was one point where I was defending a repaired bridge, trying to get to another event on the other side, and me and everyone else got steamrolled as a Vet Karka came in and insta killed us. No where to run, no place to dodge, just insta death. The waves and waves of dead players, while I’m sure some enjoyed the “Challenge” WAS NOT condusive to any sort of skilled play. I would dodge 6 or 7 red circles under my feet only to find out that all that evading was for naught, because with only two dodges I would end up landing in NEW enemy AoE that appeared underneath me. And killed me. Now, I’ve maxed out my vitality and toughness in traits because of how much I HATE DYING. And while occasionally I would out survive most of the mob, I was down just 5 or 10 seconds later than them.

Need I mention that rewards were NOT in ratio to the amount of times people were just LITERALLY wiped? I’m not talking endchest, apparently that had some decent stuff, I wouldn’t know because I just got so sick of it… I wanted to kill my computer rather than the Karka.

I said it before Anet, I’ll say it again. I thought you could do no wrong. THIS destroyed THAT. I still love you, and i’ll forgive you because everything else you’ve done has my heart, but please make trial events during nice, calm, player tested times. If something goes wrong, which in this case no one can deny that several things did, then that is the impression you leave with the newbies. Your brilliance will be overshadowed by overreaching. Your QA team cannot possibly test an event this massive to the point required to make it infallible, and you leave a sour taste in oh so many mouths, from players who have already bought the game, to newbies coming to see if they want to.

Oh for the love of Mike, I was just responding to the topic I created when some over-zealous moderator merged my thread with this nasty behemoth. Moderators, you DO realise that in doing this most people’s opinions are going to be ignored even if they ARE completely relevant, don’t you?
Or perhaps that’s the intention?
Make it so that things can be easily ignored, much like shoving your fingers in your ears and screaming “LALALALALALALALALA!!! I CAN’T HEAR YOU!!!”.

You’re potentially making valuable feedback useless.

you have to give anet some respect for attempting something on this magnitude. there was stuff happening on the open world map that would normally only be attempted in an instanced area, and there’s a really good reason for that.

they just aimed high and fell short.

the last event was particularly complex, and had some really enjoyable moments… landing a rockslide on the ancient crab, for example, was a lot more rewarding than just your standard tank and spank. other parts didn’t work so well (reinforcement stages, for example: artificially inflating the length of a set-piece by giving enemies two lives and adding zeros to their health pools is a sure fire way of sucking all the fun out of an encounter.)

i’m sure anet don’t need us to tell them what didn’t work as well as intended. this event will have given them a lot to think about as regards to what they can achieve and what they can’t.

First, let me begin by saying I did very much enjoy the event as a whole, particularly phase 3. There were some issues with lag and disconnects, but the event overall was good fun, even if I did spend a good portion of it raging about being one-shot by an enemy I couldn’t see. That said, here are some suggestions from my end regarding similar future events:

1. Break up long events into more numerous, shorter parts. By far the worst parts of the phase 3 event chain were the reinforcements phases of the Ancient Karka fight. They just dragged on forever and with how long each of the Veteran mobs took to die because of scaling and lack of rendering, it became an exercise in tedium. This portion would have been made much better if only normal Young Karka could spawn (die quickly) and only a few of the larger vets and champs throughout. Another alternative would have been to have the Ancient Karka move to different points within each area and spawn a wave at each of them so that at least players could move from point to point rather than staying in one place for upwards of 30 minutes at a time fighting one or two mobs at a time.

2. Make for multiple ways to progress events. This philosophy taken from the way many renown hearts are handled serves multiple purposes. First, it allows players to choose the way in which they want to assist with the progression of the event. That way, if there’s one event that sounds more interesting than another (Don’t like escorts? Defend the cannons!) players can choose which event they want to participate in. Second, it breaks up the massive mob of players that caused many of the gameplay difficulties throughout the event. Smaller groups of people means that the rendering cap is less likely to be a problem and each individual player or 5-man party is more likely to actually get credit for monster kills and thus a shot at loot drops. It does require a bit of communication between players in map chat to make sure all the events are properly manned, but I think that level of complexity would by and large be a welcome one.

I feel as though implementing these two design philosophies for a multi-hour event such as the Ancient Karka would greatly improve the overall quality of the event and make for an even more epic experience than this event already was.

Phase 1 was fun, Phase 2 ‘meh’ .. should have just opened the island that would have been enough! Phase 3.. frustrating

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/lostshores/Disconnected-at-the-final-phase-Merged/page/17#post796657

Phase 1 – I was excited to log in and see what was happening but I couldn’t see anything. My rig isn’t horrid, it’s pretty average so I could see characters load and animations but it just wasn’t worth playing due to the lag. I decided to hop into the dungeon instead and I loved it.

Phase 2 – I put off Phase 1 until I could do it later when there was less lag. The dungeon took up most of my time on the first day and I figured I could still complete the investigation on Saturday. The fact that I couldn’t pretty much put me off of the rest of the event.

Phase 3 – I figured the rewards would be good but not that good. The fact that it was a one time event that was not repeatable made it worse. A guarenteed exotic accessory, 20 slot bag and additional loot seemed a bit excessive for a one time 3 hour (so I’ve been told) event, not to mention the lucky people who recieved precursors.

As I understand, you have two teams that work on holiday events and content events. Do your teams communicate? Halloween ran so smoothly but this event paled in comparison. I loved Halloween but this event left me with a sour taste, not wanting to play Guild Wars anymore.

The thing that attracted me to Guild Wars was that I could play whenever I wanted. I had things to do outside of gaming, and the fact that I couldn’t log in at a specific time was disappointing. The time frame of the event was so short, I fealt I couldn’t really enjoy it. Releasing such a great dungeon at the start distracted me from the event.

Thanks for punishing those of us that had to work guys… Please consider making multiple run times for these important events, with reduced rewards for repeated play throughs.

I’ve not read the full thread, but many things had been said that I agree with (and many others I disagree)

- I enjoyed the event overall
- I LOVE the idea behind it! I’m amazed that, you guys, had such creativity, and try to implement this in game. The story, the NPC dialogue, the adventures, the mini events to capture the island. It was so GREAT ideas. Really frustrating that the technique was the main obstacle for us, to enjoy your work and your creation.
- The art of the new zone is amazing!
- The new creature, the Karka was really fun to fight. It felt epic.
- Unfortunately the lag was so important that the PH3 was almost unplayable. I even shut down my stream, hoping I would get less lag.

- Phasing the “story” quest of the event would be the best solution in future. Better immersion (camping a NPC with 30 other players is absolutely anticlimatic), less bug problem.

One very annoying thing with the overflow system was to stay with your party/guild. We have decided in my guild <Mist Angels> that we would do the event together, as a guild. We were 20 members participating, and we had to use tricks to stay in the same overflow. If someone was disconnecting, he had huge difficulty to come back in the same overflow than everyone else.
An idea would be to have overflow that can be claimed by a party (or a guild), that party/guild overflow can be filled by randoms, but the guild (or party) that claimed it, will not be kicked from that overflow.

- Make the mails announce the event a bit before so we have the time to reach the right place. I missed the first minutes of the events (and the fancy conversations) because I was waiting with my guild in the wrong place. Time we reached the place, the event was already started.

-The Fractal of the Mist is a great concept, and a awesome dungeon. Didn’t tried the new PVP map yet.

The event was a disaster.

On friday and saturday it was so laggy, buggy and “any foe kills you in 1 hit” that it wasn’t even fun to play. On sunday I wasn’t even able to sign in.

I missed the lottery at the end, and more importantly, I missed content!
I don’t really care about the shinies, but I’d like to see the content so… redux?

Matt Witter.6982:

We feel that everyone should have the ability to contribute no matter what time of the day it is. How we’ve came to this conclusion is that no player’s time is more valuable than another. Everyone has different off peak hours for whatever reason. Players should not be punished or unable to experience and view the same content as everyone else because they play at a different time. They too are paying customers.

The above quote was taken from the WvW forums regarding “Night Capping” by Matt Witter (Game Designer, ANet). Please apply the same logic to World Events, especially if you’re giving out drops like legendary precursors. Please stop the “one-time” events tied to a specific time of day. There are lots of suggestions on this forum about how to get around it. Implement phasing on a character/account basis, let it run repeatedly for a week or a month, etc. The rest of us might not be playing during peak concurrency hours, but we’re paying customers too.

Thank you.

Event was annoying, really worst event i ever seen in a mmo.
Press 1 for 3hr isn’t funny at all and ress ppl continously isn’t funny at all.

And the lag? Oh for the goddess i run at 5 fps all the time, isn’t funny at all.

Reward?
- 20 bag slot, not bad;
- 2 random exotic, all kitten i don’t need i sell them for 1 gold (>_>)
- 3 random rare, all kitten i don’t need i sell them for 30 silver (-.-")

The event worth it? Not at all.

2+ hours of fighting just to be kicked while fighting the last boss and could not get back on. When I managed to get back on 30mins later to find the end boss had died and I missed it I was miffed, was not to bothered about the chest I just wanted to kill the final boss. Was a nice fun event just too over populated on the overflows. Overall ANET you planned a nice event, thanks. Sadly from doing this mega event and the Halloween I wont be doing the winters-day events as you guys have let me down. I am used to you guys planning epic events from guild wars and these are just a let down.

/signed.

I don’t usually complain, but when I do, things got really, really unfair.

One-Time events are awesome, the only thing needed is a better solution for bringing them to all timezones.

I really feel for you, ANet clearly aren’t thinking things through.

bufko.2497:

One-Time events are awesome, the only thing needed is a better solution for bringing them to all timezones.

Which aint doable when all timezones can be on one server.

I kind of mixed feelings over the Lost Shores event. On the one-hand, there’s really good content added. On the other, it’s been a disappointing affair.

This is from someone playing from the other side of the globe. Obviously, due to real-life commitments, it’s not possible to be awake at the start of the next phase unless I want to fail at real-life.

Ups:

I found the Fractals (only did a few runs) to be fun and the environments beautiful. Southsun Cove was also quite unique in its looks and the upped difficulty was challenging, yet not overwhelmingly so. It was a pretty good idea to run an event in conjunction with the addition of new content.

Downs:

The difficulty scale of fractals felt like an exclusivity metric, much like PvP ranks in GW1. Doing one-day only quest chains was disappointing. I skipped the scavenger hunts on phase 1 because I read they were bugged. Turns out on phase 2, only one of them was bugged and the only way I can “play” the other one now is to read the wiki.

Doing a one-time only event was a very bad decision. Especially with valuable reward items thrown in. Halloween was great, almost like a GW1 event – that one-time cutscene I missed is no biggie. But three days of one-time only events? Quite disappointing I’m forced to miss them due to being in the wrong timezone. And because I missed them, I guess the good thing is that I also missed out on all those lag and connectivity issues I’ve seen others complaining about.

I enjoyed the event on the whole.

Had a few pacing problems (the kill reinforcements phase… urrgh). But, it was epic in scope and a lot of fun with my guild on TS.

Adding to the noise though; Pre-cursors should NOT be distributed in one-time events. I know why it was done, but it’s a lazy solution to the inflation problem and did nothing but add frustration to the mix.

Pre-cursors in future, as i’m sure you’ll add more legendaries in time, should be RNG from the forge aswell as the option for a long, epic quest chain that results in a Bind on Acquire version. Give something for people to work too, not yet more RNG to pray to.

/signed.

I was there trying to participate the event but disconnecting regularly and killing mobs and not counting towards kill count was frustrating and I quit. Then learned that if I could go for like 1 hour (without disconnecting of course) I could get a precursor. This is not what I am paying for.

bufko.2497:

One-Time events are awesome, the only thing needed is a better solution for bringing them to all timezones.

There’s an extremely simple solution for that.

They are going to get negative responses either way, so they should focus on actually making things doable for every time zone and that is easily achievable by locking server migration for the duration of the event and introducing the events at certain, different hours, for every region, that way servers wouldn’t melt because of all the players going at it, at the same time (that means better performance for everyone), people won’t benefit and abuse from transferring to regions that are just about to start the event and some people won’t have to wake up at 2-5 AM in the morning to participate.

Personally I had no problem with the timing, but the servers aren’t capable of sustaining such events at the same time and I see how it can be a huge problem for lots of people that simply can’t participate due to time differences.

Also signed, but doubtful anything will actually happen.

One time events make the world feel alive. Paying customer? There is more than 60$ of entertainment value in the game w/o the one time events.

I would say that instead of a huge event with hundreds of players and mobs i would say more like a dungeon looking one that can only be done once. Time is limited to one day for doing it and people with bad internet connection/computr can still play without invisibl mobs, DCs and so on. Also exclude rewards as precursors since those are supposed to be mega rare (imo). One thing that many tend to forget is that this was actually a content update and the event was only a lore part for it. i mean 1 epic dungeon, a decent PvE map, A spvp map (havent tried), new gear and alot of fixes. Anet did good i think except for the rewards and testing (alot of bugs in the event). rewards should have been 1 special item (event item like a skin) about 2 rares and 1 exotic, not kitten precursors for around 100g (present prizes keep on falling, they are supposed to be expensive since you have to sacrifice exotics for it…)

P.s sry for bad English but im in school and in a rush.

The Lost Shores themselves were interesting. I liked the DE where you have to avoid buried worms while snagging up golem parts, as it was very different than DEs that usually seem to involve just killing things or bringing an npc items after the battle. It actually reminded me of a Challenge map from GW Factions.

When I saw mention that it was going on throughout the day, I figured it might hopefully still be going after I got off work. So, when I saw people talking about it restarting multiple times in some of the overflow servers as well as about the “rewards” well, I was pretty stoked over the chance to get to do the event, beat the boss, and see it first hand, let alone items like a 20 slot bag, or an unique earring.

I do commend ANet for making the events accessible to players of all levels and not just making it just for level 80 characters, and its one of the few things I felt worked really well for this event.

My main issues with how it seems to have been handled overall are…
1. There are still too many cases of events being bugged where NPCs don’t exist and on events that only last a single day especially, being unable to be fixed during the event, really kills a lot of the incentive to even try to complete the event as well as causes a lot of player frustration due to the content deciding to cease to exist when it should be still available.

2. This is particularly focused on the finale event. When I finally was able to get on, due to having to be at work before that, it took quite a while before I could even enter an overflow server that had the event, and wasn’t full. Shortly after we got to the reinforcement phase, the servers mass disconnected everyone with no warning. Somehow I made it back to an overflow server that was around the same point, and things were going well, until we reached the last group of the reinforcement phase and ran into the “A New Build is Available” message. At that point I was already starting to dread that this was going to be how my time with the event would end. When the Announcement appeared that stated “We’ve updated the game for routine maintenance only. No content changes were included.” appeared, I stuck around for a bit since it wasn’t midnight Pacific time yet, and “No content changes were included.” might mean the event should still be available. Unfortunately that did not seem to be the case, which took all the excitement I got from logging on after work and finding out that the event wasn’t completely over, and turned it into disappointment and frustration.

I can live with the fact that I didn’t get to finish the events, even if its frustrating that I didn’t have the chance to take part in it on a meaningful level. However, when even the basic event rewards are quite nice on top of that, it just makes the frustration worse for those who weren’t able to do it due to server lag, time zones, or just having real life commitments that can’t be dropped for a game event.

I still hold that the combination of how the event “Ended”, which mostly seems to have been a new build patch at a very inopportune time during the Ancient Karka fight in various overflow servers combined with almost complete lack of mod explanations, comments, or even presence on the forums except for the announcement about the “maintenance” perhaps makes it understandable why so many people are upset.

I do think the Community did a wonderful job helping people find overflows that were still doing the event, and continuing to work on beating the Ancient Karkan to help those of us who couldn’t make it earlier be able to at least take it down once. My fellow players, thank you, I only wish we had been allowed to finish what we’d began.

I don’t really even mind the missing the Precursor stuff, it would have been nice to have gotten one, but its not like everyone did. I just wanted to finish, and maybe even get more bag space or the earring to look forwards to as an upgrade once I actually could equip it.

In conclusion, its not the end of the world. I may just start ignoring any one time event that I can’t commit to wholly. Why should I f6rustrate myself trying to play content that seems like it was rushed and that either due to bugged events or schedule limitations (which I can’t help but feel would have been fixed by something like the GW1 events or Mad King Says this year which repeated the finale throughout the day. If strict scheduling is something that the developers know will make a notable group of customers frustrated and upset, why not have a more lenient timeframe to do it in? I’m not sure anyone thought that the finale for this event meant that it was going to be one time per server, especially when it was stated to be available for several hours.) only to have the game cut off in the middle of the event.

Here is my feedback. (I’ll try to put the lag & bugs on a seperate caterogy)

1. The one time events:
As everyone says, most of them lacked rewards. The rewards for the final one that lasted almost 3 hours where nice, but the rest where big fat Kittens.
The final event seemed unbalanced and lasted far longer than it was supposed to. I came to that conclusion from the phases of the ancient Karka battle where thenever it instructed us to fight the reinforcements it was taking far more time that the rest of the phases combined. Also I it seemed like another Karka like the hundreds we took down that day alone with the only deference that it wont die!
If you take those problems aside, the final battle would have been epic.

2. The Karka.
I never thought that I would ask for the Risen back. They are extreamly annoying to fight. They have tons of life, they lay minions, they can roll-murder entire parties, they reflect damage, they use evade every 3rd second and if these weren’t enough, they have a second lifebar waiting after you chip the first.
There is a very basic rulle in videogames. When you see a Giant Enemy Crab, you attack his weakpoint for massive damage, you don’t chip away it’s health little by little! These Krabs had no weakspot thus they where very anoying to fight.
The small ones can be even more dangerus, since they have an overpower skill that can drain 2/3 of your herth if you are not able to dodge, and the veterans are the worst thing for a large groupe! I spend 15 silver in repairs in the last event alone.
Unless A-net change them in a future patch, I don’t want to see Karka again ever in my life!

3. The Southsun Cove.
It’ll definitly become a ghost area if left as it is… It’s full of the dreaddfull Karka, the map is small, it has no vistas, no hearts, no map complition rewards, few events, lots of mobs, and scarse waypoints. You have no reason to get there since there is no rare Karma vendor waiting at the end of the events like Orr.
I was expecting that we would be able to get there from Sparkfly fen or at least the Grove, but here comes the bad habit of plasing everything new or importand to LA as if it weren’t overpopulated enough already!
Other than that, the area is also hard to navigate, with huge clifs in 70% of it’s shores and lots of enemies (especially Karka) being scatered to make sure that you wont be able to go from point A to B unmolested. It’s looks is also as uninviting as a comet’s surface, so with the absence of content, I have little reason to go there again.

4. Fractals.
I really apreciate that A-net finaly took our feedback and made smaller dungeons, but I was expecting them to fix the existing ones rather than impimenting it only to new ones. Despite that I believe that they are a nice addition to GW2, as long as they move their entrance away from LA. For the mother of Love, why are they so obsessed with that City.

5. Temple of the Silent Storm.
Once again, any new PVP map is very apreciated, since the structured PVP is the part of the game that you spend the most time on the same areas and can get the most repetative.
I’m expecting something for WvW next time, like for example, to make the server borderlands not being identical to each other.

6. Bugs and lag:
Unlike the halloween event, this patch had lots! Big battles in my weak rig become a slideshow even on the lowest settings, so I can’t get I fully enjoy these big events.
For the love of God, please don’t call any more people on LA! The only reason the phase 3 halloween event survived without crashing everyones computer was because it olny expected them to stand there, and even that didn’t spare my rig from droping my fps to the botom. If they actually expect us to do combat in such quantities, it won’t be just the weak rigs that would lag.
As it was also proven by the scavanger hunt where 3 out of 5 essential NPCs where bugged, A-net wasn’t ready for this patch.

End result:
The event was very ambitius and the final battle could have been epic if it wasn’t for the new Karka enemy being so annoying to fight. I don’t want to see a Karka ever again in my life, and I’ll stop eating see food. While the new area is advertised as one that came to stay, they is currently nothing there that would make me want to go there again.
The PVP and new dungeon additions where nice, most like they had nothing to do with the Karka or the lost shores.
Lag and bug broke the experience for many and the phase 1 event was a total failure.
At least with the 3rd one we ended up with some nice loot.

One time events are the most monumentally stupid design choice ANet could have made about this game’s special events. And yet, ANet is full of smart people who mean well and probably actually like their fans. So what gives?

I’m fine with one-time events. In fact I’d like to see more of them. I know it sucks if you can’t make it, but that’s life… the real world works in the same way. They can’t please everyone, and they can’t run this stuff over and over. I’d sooner have these once-only events than not…

Just don’t include pre-cursors; it sucks for people who can’t make it, and it sucks for players who don’t get one after 4 hours, only to see them drop to players who joined your overflow on an alt to get one, or that guy who spent the whole fight dead because he sucks badly.

In a game where skill is being touted as a requirement (by the developers no less), RNG shouldn’t play a part in the reward scheme.

DanielDust.3742:

bufko.2497:

One-Time events are awesome, the only thing needed is a better solution for bringing them to all timezones.

There’s an extremely simple solution for that.

They are going to get negative responses either way, so they should focus on actually making things doable for every time zone and that is easily achievable by locking server migration for the duration of the event and introducing the events at certain, different hours, for every region, that way servers wouldn’t melt because of all the players going at it, at the same time (that means better performance for everyone), people won’t benefit and abuse from transferring to regions that are just about to start the event and some people won’t have to wake up at 2-5 AM in the morning to participate.

Personally I had no problem with the timing, but the servers aren’t capable of sustaining such events at the same time and I see how it can be a huge problem for lots of people that simply can’t participate due to time differences.

Inform of what servers are going to have the event at what times, a week in advance, to allow people to have a week to plan which server they want to get on. That’s the only amendment to your idea I can think of.

These past two ‘one time’ events have happened at 8am on a Monday morning for me, with work it’s impossible to attend.

I goto say I was very Disappointed in the whole event.

Phase 1, Played for about 20min then gave up as the lag was a joke

Phase 2, Started with the normal lag, got a dc and came back in to no lag, but the event was boring

Phase 3, Started it with the normal lag, got a dc move to a different overflow which was fine and I had no lag there, we did ok and were on the way to the top of the cave, then got dced and moved to a new overflow that hadn’t even started the event, Plus being a melee speced guardian all I seen was the legs of bloody karka, I the end I logged of and watched a film.

Overall I think the idea was nice and its a cool way to open a new zone, but Id rather arena net focus on sorting out the lag/dc problems then making big events that they can’t fully support.

TLDR: Not worth the time spent and getting nothing out because of dcs is just lame.