Guild Wars 2

As I write this post, I’m standing in Sparkfly Fen looking at an untouched Tequatl encounter. The first spawn after reset.

Meanwhile, my guildmate in Bloodtide Coast is watching as three asura from The Vigil venture off on their own to learn about a Great Jungle Wurm.

This is the issue I see with “elite” content in GW2. Shortly after they are beaten, interest immediately drops and remains so long after the content has been released. In the case of Tequatl, occationally groups (like TTS) come and destroy the beast. Nevertheless, according to API numbers, less than 3% of all Tequatl spawns end with a kill!

The culprit? My bet is on the rewards.

While there is a “small chance” at getting a unique Ascended weapon or armor, the percentages are meager – especially considering the difficulty of coordinating these encounters. Getting a handful of green-quality items for a hair-pulling, adrenaline-induced fight is a slap in the face of anyone returning, hoping for a chance for something unique.

Why is the loot and rewards in this game so terrible? Why are greens salvaged away with only the consolation of additional Magic Find, which doesn’t contribute to chest rewards anyway?

If rewards don’t consistently match the difficulty of the content, Guild Wars 2 will have a hard time retaining players when more rewarding games come to market.

As I conclude writing this post, Tequatl just destroyed another Vigil Megalaser. Such as waste…

I think it’s a combination of rewards being frequently insufficient + lack of proper scaling. Sure, Tequatl and the GJW shouldn’t be soloable, or even 5-mannable, but a group of, say, 10-20 players who all know what to do should have a decent chance of beating the encounter. Requiring a minimum of 80+ players in the district is just asking too much. (That isn’t to say that Tequatl or future mega-bosses can’t scale up to be still challenging for 100+ players, but I feel they should be challenging for large zergs as well as small groups.)

Given the high amount of coordination required for Teq and the Wurm too, perhaps something like a guaranteed Exotic once per day for them might also entice players to keep attempting them at all available opportunities.

I completely agree. If you look at the forum posting of the first Great Jungle Wurm defeat, you’ll see how many players complained about the awful loot they received. Perhaps something like a token system could be implemented for those who wanted the boss exclusive armor/weapons. That way players have at least some motivation to complete the events.

Imo, the problem lies with the boss spawning way too often. Let him spawn every 2 hours for the first week, but after that reduce it to 3 times a week, and later even to once a week.
That way, people get to figure out the boss relatively quickly in the beginning, but later they don’t know him down once per day. With limited spawns the rewards could be bumped up significantly, giving a really incentive to go back and kill him. And people will actually participate because they only get one chance per week to get the awesome loot, meaning no more empty encounters.
That would require consistent spawn times, e.g. Friday 17:30 GMT. With the ability to guest to other timezones (should something come up) but only getting one try at the boss.

NinjaChris.9340:

Imo, the problem lies with the boss spawning way too often. Let him spawn every 2 hours for the first week, but after that reduce it to 3 times a week, and later even to once a week.

That would require consistent spawn times, e.g. Friday 17:30 GMT. With the ability to guest to other timezones (should something come up) but only getting one try at the boss.

And I suppose the people who have to work around that time will just never get the chance. Riiight… That works for everybody. >.>

Furthermore, how in the hell would people be able to organize themselves, even if they could absolutely keep that time slot free? The map only supports 120 people or some such, and as it stands, you’re likely to get bumped to overflow when an organized guild is making an attempt. So let’s say 5-10 guilds all show up to do it, you’ll inevitably get 10-20 overflow servers full of people who don’t know each other all running around without guidance.

And even if they do manage to get their kitten together and make an honest attempt, they still might fail anyway, and then they have to wait another week.

That is not the problem as I see it. The problem for me is that I more or less NEVER get acess to my own home server due to overflow after overflow. That is what makes me not go to the worm right now… I go there 15 min Prior and end up on an overflow with almost no ppl in it. I havnt even been able to set foot at my own server lately on the two maps that have new bosses now. Oh, it have happened twice in Lornars – right AFTER the Marionette. A few mins later its impossible again, if u come from any other map.

The overflow issue on Hight populated Servers really need to be sorted.

@Peter Thomas:
You have to keep in mind though, there are players that are killing the boss 7+times a week and there are those that maybe try it once a week, succeed maybe every other week.
If the rewards are really valuable, casual players will be happy, but the economy will be flooded with the rewards the hardcore players rake in.
That’s why WoW has their “you can only try each boss once a week”-buisness.

And if the bosses respawn every 2 hours it’s impossible to find other people to try it with, because people don’t gather around at certain fixed times.

Zaxares.5419:

Given the high amount of coordination required for Teq and the Wurm too, perhaps something like a guaranteed Exotic once per day for them might also entice players to keep attempting them at all available opportunities.

I totally agree with this, i’ve been doing the marionette event for like 15 times and beaten it twice, and well… not even an exotic, the only good reward was the gift of sprockets they gave me for completing the meta achievement (and it’s a pitty that’s actually the best reward) also i got some ascended recipes i can barely use.

The thing is, i’m done with mari and the BJW doesn’t strike me as i know that even if i get to beat him the rewards will be very low, the possiblity of getting 1 exotic per day, would totally motivate me to complete the event.

I thinks that’s all it takes, motivation, otherwise, people gets bored.