Guild Wars 2

Towards the villagers

First off, theres the bug that lets courtiers get their regular skills, so villagers have to survive/fend off a Ranger shooting at them, AOE slowing them, or a Guardian grabbing them…. with black goop

Second, the events to gather items for bonus’s to villagers are hard to finish
because they all want items that almost never spawn there.

The only time I’ve ever finished, was up to a mighty skeleton (vetern skeleton) and that was because the enemy courtiers were probably afk or off chasing someone else, and I had to traverse half the map to gather enough bone for a pretty measly bonus as the couriers could easily just run past the skeletons to get you.

Third, when courtiers chase you, they can just spam Mad King says and its a lose lose for the villager regardless of what they do

If they complete the command, yea sure they get a bonus movespeed for like what? 5 seconds? in return for standing there for a good 1-2 seconds? which makes any one chasing them easily able to catch up and kill them

If they ignore the order, the down time from the stun is much shorter, but they get damaged in the process, and the courtiers can just spam Mad king says again and again until the villager is either dead or caught up to

Finally there is no place to hide because couriers get TP and map vision Sure, it may have come complications for the courtiers, but honestly, with the mad king says spamming, hiding is the best choice atm because if you are chased; the courtiers just spam mad king says.

Remove the courier’s ability to spam Mad king says, make it so courtiers can only do it once a minute, using it at crucial moments during a chase, not spam it over and over again and again.

If you want to keep the mad king says spam, remove the map vision.

Give villagers options, Run, or hide

Fighting too risky, and uncoordinated, you can’t even join together with party friends.
Bonuses from completing quests do jack all
hiding is useless because all one guy has to do is to 4 parts of the map to get repeated map vision
and running is pointless because couriers just spam mad king says.

I’m glad someone made this topic: I was pretty sad to play this year, I had fond memories of fun last year but I instantly recalled why I ultimately shied away from the activity.

We can both agree on one thing:
The Mad King Says simply needs to go. It is not worth balancing, it is confusing, cheesy, and unfair. This is something “new players” will be ultra-confused about, and indeed I watched as my girlfriend sitting next to me was confused as to why she was suddenly stunned.

I’m going to disagree on the running of objects to NPCs. If you get a group of people who actually care, you can really accomplish a lot with the NPCs.

However, the reality is that when courtiers die, it really doesn’t matter. It needs to matter, send them back to spawn.

It is a LOT of fun to get a little army going against the courtiers, but the two problems I’ve mentioned are ones I consider the greatest hindrance to the game being fun.

One more thing: people farm this game because winning as a villager isn’t the worth the time to survive, reward-wise. So many people last night were just sitting in spawn waiting to be converted so it would all end faster. Maybe a shorter event timer would help.

Please show some love for activities, ANet. Would it be hard to remove the Mad King Says skill, at least, for this year’s halloween?

The Last Man Standing game mode IS supposed to be weighted towards the Courtiers, with the idea that as more and more ghosts appear, it gets harder and harder for the survivors.

However, I do agree that it could be made a bit more fair to give the Villagers more of a fighting chance. Here’s my suggestions:

1. Mad King Says spam. This is probably the biggest issue. Basically, once a Courtier gets within range of you, a villager is doomed because the Courtier will just spam MKS at you, forcing you to either take the damage, or stop and emote which gives the Courtier enough time to catch up to you and decapitate you.

Solution: If a villager successfully performs the MKS, the COURTIER is the one to take the damage and stun instead. This makes MKS more of a calculated gamble, used when the villager is close enough to get some attacks in and hopefully kill them before they can successfully perform the action.

2. Death Penalties. Currently, if the villagers do manage to kill the Courtier (no easy feat), the Courtier simply respawns in their current spot a few seconds later at full health. This means that no matter what, Courtiers will win in a fight due to attrition.

Solution: When a Courtier is killed, they respawn back at the Mad King’s location. This gives the villager(s) time to retreat, regroup and rearm. Unless the villager is very, VERY skilled, it’s impossible for them to kill a Courtier one on one. If the villagers are smart enough to band together and organise a defense (2 or 3 villagers with hammers while 1 or 2 more use Bones/Torches for stunlock are extremely dangerous), they should be rewarded appropriately. (And even so, considering the massive damage that ghosts do, it’s likely they will still manage to kill at least one villager per attack.)

The bug goes both ways for both villagers and courtiers. A villager with full skills can wipe a Lunatic, a Lunatic with full skills can wipe a villager. Its a game breaking bug regardless that needs to be fixed. Although I do hear it also comes with an unfair advantage in the Lunatic Courts favor, because people who die before the game starts get converted into Lunatics, meaning you could have 5 right off the bat as the game starts.

In terms of items, I had no problems with this when Halloween first came out. Ideally, the villagers should be working together, traveling in packs and collecting items — calling out when a defense is almost ready to be completed. Most of games tended to be a fair amount of wins and losses on both sides.
Then midway through Halloween, villagers just stopped collecting items, it became this “I’m so smart, I’m gonna just AFK and hide in this spot.” But in reality you are hindering the villagers when you do this, the less people helping build up the defense, the less benefits they get. No food tables to heal at, no monster allies to kill Lunatics on sight.

The Halloween last year saw people willingly throwing themselves at the Lunatic Court to get games done faster and get loot from chieves. When you have so many Lunatics right off the bat, defense doesn’t really help.

At this point, most games currently only last 5 mins at most, because most people are just hiding in corners, not doing objectives, died due to bugs, or willingly throw themselves at courtiers to try and get the game over with.
I’d say most of the Lunatics know 90% of the hiding spots at this point you’re going to be found if you just sit there. Hiding in one spot is not the best option, I feel it should be your end all option and that you do it strategically, most people don’t. In the end the villagers lose.

I really honestly used to like the game back when it first came out, but the love waned with the 2nd Halloween.
All-in-all, I think the game could use a rework, tweaking penalties for Lunatics, making for strategy involved being one, giving people a reason to want to win as villagers, not throwing themselves to the Lunatics to get things over with faster.

Going to put my vote in with this, I was looking forward to this game again but realized its a lot more fun to just get yourself killed and become a Lunatic at the beginning.

What really irritates me is not the skills that come with the game but when someone is glitched and they have their class skills instead of Lunatic or Courtier skills. It’s extremely imbalanced and just ruins the fun for everyone except the person who is glitched. This really needs to be fixed asap please.

Um you guys do know how to get rifles right?

I know Lunatic Inquisition is just a temporary diversion, but it’s loads of fun, so I thought I’d add my two cents anyway. I do agree with the topic and feel that surviving as a villager is too difficult. As was already stated, the Mad King Says ability for courtiers seems overpowered. Nearly evertime I’ve been chased by a courtier, he’d repeatedly use the Mad King Says ability, rendering me constantly stationary and helpess as I complete each emote – even with the refreshed Hide in Shadows, the courtier will relentlessly slash the area of my last visible spot. However, without this ability, it is quite easy to outrun a courtier, so I can kind of see why it was implemented.

I feel another issue is the now numerous courtiers that spawn at the start of the game – though I don’t know if it’s a bug or not. Previously, only one courtier would spawn at the start of the game, and it felt like the difficulty ramped up throughout the round at just the right pace. And it gave villagers just enough “breathing room” at the beginning to strategize and gather/hand in a few supplies. At the moment, with 3-4+ ghosts right at the start, it feels overwhelming and it’s become almost impossible to summon one of the various npc defenders, let alone to survive for the time allotted. Of course, I will acknowledge the fact that there is an intentional advantage given to the courtiers over the villagers, and with dedicated players – though rare – achieving victory as a villager is very possible.

Regardless, I’m still enjoying Lunatic Inquisition, and I’d love to see it become permanent one day.

Nontoxic.6710:

Um you guys do know how to get rifles right?

The rifle isn’t any better than the hammer. You still need to be in melee range for it to be effective at all, and you have to go through a series of tasks to get it. Also, you only have 1 shot with skill 2, so make it count. Honestly, you’re better off not even fighting the courtiers cause they don’t actually die, just get stunned for 2 seconds before recovering at full hp. To top it all off, if you get the rifle and a courtier uses an MKS command, all that hard work to get the rifle was flushed down the toilet since you just “lose” it.

Thing is, if the villagers fight back “together” right at the beginning instead of just running away they can kill the lunatics easily.

The bug is breaking, definitely needs a fix.
But what I think needs to be done is to cut off the banquet to be the last reward of the ghost events while the allies are the first, or else it will be 10+ items to get the minions and people will never get to it before dying, making it just not worth going for the events if you had a better chance just hiding.

LunarNacht.8913:

Thing is, if the villagers fight back “together” right at the beginning instead of just running away they can kill the lunatics easily.

Not easily. It takes 2-5 villagers to equal 1 Lunatic. If they tried to fight back against all the Lunatics, they’d lose because of the damage and fears.

LunarNacht.8913:

Thing is, if the villagers fight back “together” right at the beginning instead of just running away they can kill the lunatics easily.

Doesn’t really do you any good though. It delays the inevitable. The courtier are sure to score a conversion sooner or later, and you’ll just have 1 more to deal with. Courtiers will just use MKS on the most threatening one, and delete their weapon. The fact that they continue to let the courtiers stay this OP just makes me wish they’d remove this activity for Reaper’s Rumble instead, at least then both teams are balanced.

Please get rid of (or make massive changes to) Mad King Says skills. They’re game-breakingly impossible to counter right now, and it’s one of the reasons I didn’t have that much fun playing the game last year and am having even less fun this year.

Also, as has been mentioned a few times before, make killing ghosts more of a possibility than it currently is, and give ghost deaths a larger penalty than what they’re currently receiving.

I personally would love it if the only change they did was get rid of fear, i think fear tips the balance to much in favor of the lunatics.

I don’t understand how you’re supposed to survive over 20k worth of damage when you only have 18k health and the only “weapon” you have deals under 1k damage!

It’s completely unbalanced and pointless. All you do is go in, run around, find something useless and wait to die when some OP ability 1hits you.

I certainly will not be wasting any more time on this imbalanced activity.

Dondagora.9645:

LunarNacht.8913:

Thing is, if the villagers fight back “together” right at the beginning instead of just running away they can kill the lunatics easily.

Not easily. It takes 2-5 villagers to equal 1 Lunatic. If they tried to fight back against all the Lunatics, they’d lose because of the damage and fears.

That’s why I said at the beginning, when there aren’t that many lunatics. If you can stop them from multiplying for a while you can finish some of the collection events which will spawn allied mobs that aren’t easy to deal with for the lunatics. MKS will reset the cd of your stealth too. So if another villager can stop the courtier for the duration you can run away and stealth somewhere.

One thing that can be a problem are the detection the courtiers have on the portpoint.

Really, the villagers can only win if they work together at the beginning and that’s rare. The game suffers from the same problem every other activity suffers from. You can’t play it with friends only with random people.

LunarNacht.8913:

Dondagora.9645:

LunarNacht.8913:

Thing is, if the villagers fight back “together” right at the beginning instead of just running away they can kill the lunatics easily.

Not easily. It takes 2-5 villagers to equal 1 Lunatic. If they tried to fight back against all the Lunatics, they’d lose because of the damage and fears.

That’s why I said at the beginning, when there aren’t that many lunatics. If you can stop them from multiplying for a while you can finish some of the collection events which will spawn allied mobs that aren’t easy to deal with for the lunatics. MKS will reset the cd of your stealth too. So if another villager can stop the courtier for the duration you can run away and stealth somewhere.

One thing that can be a problem are the detection the courtiers have on the portpoint.

Really, the villagers can only win if they work together at the beginning and that’s rare. The game suffers from the same problem every other activity suffers from. You can’t play it with friends only with random people.

Huh, interesting tactic. Might have to get a whole guild to pull it off, but could be fun.

I agree but it’s a lot of fun

This thread appears every year, and this year I will take it upon me to say this: villagers aren’t supposed to win. It’s intentional. They’re there so the courtiers can eat them.

I think it’s supposed to have been fixed now, in that last patch. I meant to check it out last night, but I had to go to bed because I’m really sick and a kitten wuss.

Rentapest.6503:

‘go in, run around, find something useless and wait to die’

Ok that made me lol

LunarNacht.8913:

That’s why I said at the beginning, when there aren’t that many lunatics. If you can stop them from multiplying for a while you can finish some of the collection events which will spawn allied mobs that aren’t easy to deal with for the lunatics.

It’s impossible to even GET into the arena without being spawn killed instantly on a loading screen. Then if you somehow get into the arena alive, you run around looking for junk on the floor only to find absolutely USELESS stuff, then get 1hit by an OP eviscerate ability.

LunarNacht.8913:

Really, the villagers can only win if they work together at the beginning and that’s rare. The game suffers from the same problem every other activity suffers from. You can’t play it with friends only with random people.

You really expect pug’s to work together? This is precisely why this entire activity is an utter waste of time and effort!

People want to play the game with their friends, not complete strangers who won’t work together because they only care about themselves!

All I do to complete this event is get 7 points for survive 1minute or 10points for evading an attack, die and sit for 12minutes at the spawn afk avoiding the auto-kick. It’s boring and pointless.

Rentapest.6503:

LunarNacht.8913:

That’s why I said at the beginning, when there aren’t that many lunatics. If you can stop them from multiplying for a while you can finish some of the collection events which will spawn allied mobs that aren’t easy to deal with for the lunatics.

It’s impossible to even GET into the arena without being spawn killed instantly on a loading screen. Then if you somehow get into the arena alive, you run around looking for junk on the floor only to find absolutely USELESS stuff, then get 1hit by an OP eviscerate ability.

LunarNacht.8913:

Really, the villagers can only win if they work together at the beginning and that’s rare. The game suffers from the same problem every other activity suffers from. You can’t play it with friends only with random people.

You really expect pug’s to work together? This is precisely why this entire activity is an utter waste of time and effort!

People want to play the game with their friends, not complete strangers who won’t work together because they only care about themselves!

All I do to complete this event is get 7 points for survive 1minute or 10points for evading an attack, die and sit for 12minutes at the spawn afk avoiding the auto-kick. It’s boring and pointless.

if you dont want to play, then dont
if you dont like to play, then dont

i find it really fun, but i almost always see villagers hiding and sitting around when they should never be still. its like they think the courtiers cant find them or something. and then they die and go walk on the teleporters themselves to look for hidden juicy snacks.

Mad king says is fine.

The problems are:

(1) Events for villagers are underpowered. The first step involving the banquet has to go.

(2) Too many lunatics at the start of the game: There is supposed to be just one. However, in the real world, almost none of the instances start off full. When players join they are more likely to start as lunatics unless some time has passed. This results in gamers where there are 5 lunatics 30s in.

(3) The radar is too big. Press M when you are on the teleported and you can see almost the whole map.

(4) The “winning” villager doesn’t get credit towards the achievement, and neither does the last villager, if he is killed after 4:40. A lot of people playing are achievement hunters looking to finish their 50AP as soon as possible and they actively want to die so the can become ghosts.

(4a). A lot of the achievement hunters just want games to end quickly and villager wins end 5 minutes later than lunatic wins.

(5) There are spots on the map inaccessible to ghosts.

The simplest to implement fix to everything is to just shorten the game timer. But barring that, eliminating the banquet events, lessening radar, and switching the formula so that hot joiners start as villagers would balance things a lot.

I agree that lots of changes need to be made to Lunatic Inquisition. Currently, I only play to waste some time and grab a few bags while cooking, because there’s no point to trying to win. It doesn’t even give better rewards based on personal score, just on number of rounds.

nekretaal.6485:

Mad king says is fine.

The problems are:

(1) Events for villagers are underpowered. The first step involving the banquet has to go.

(2) Too many lunatics at the start of the game: There is supposed to be just one. However, in the real world, almost none of the instances start off full. When players join they are more likely to start as lunatics unless some time has passed. This results in gamers where there are 5 lunatics 30s in.

(3) The radar is too big. Press M when you are on the teleported and you can see almost the whole map.

(4) The “winning” villager doesn’t get credit towards the achievement, and neither does the last villager, if he is killed after 4:40. A lot of people playing are achievement hunters looking to finish their 50AP as soon as possible and they actively want to die so the can become ghosts.

(4a). A lot of the achievement hunters just want games to end quickly and villager wins end 5 minutes later than lunatic wins.

(5) There are spots on the map inaccessible to ghosts.

The simplest to implement fix to everything is to just shorten the game timer. But barring that, eliminating the banquet events, lessening radar, and switching the formula so that hot joiners start as villagers would balance things a lot.

0. Nah, MKS isn’t fine. If the ghost knows what they’re doing, the moment they get within range of you for MKS, you’re finished. The cooldown for the MKS skills is just enough that they can begin casting right before the old one finishes, and it will take effect on you just as you take the damage, resulting in you permanently locked under MKS.

Furthermore, MKS can be used on villagers even without line of sight and through walls and other obstructions.

1. The Banquets are actually useful if a villager has the rifle. Eating from the Banquets replenishes the rifle’s ammo, and short of the Ripper, the rifle deals the single most amount of damage to ghosts.

Trouble is, a lot of villagers just eat from the Banquet for the speed buff, which is a total waste.

I do think the Banquets could be made more useful by making it non-depletable, so once the Banquet is created, a villager can essentially use it as a free health kit forever.

2. Agreed. A large part of the imbalance is created by players who intentionally suicide at the start just to become ghosts, giving the Courtiers a much bigger advantage during the early minutes than they should have.

3. The radar is needed to give the Courtiers an idea of where to go, but perhaps a small tweak where the radar does not reveal villagers who are standing still would be fine. (This makes hiding a much more viable strategy, although experienced ghosts would still know where are the best hiding spots and go check there.)

4. The bug here seems to be that you must get a kill in order to get credit. This means you must either kill (or help kill) a villager or a ghost within the match.

5. They’re not completely inaccessible to ghosts, but I agree that they are exploits that the vast majority of players can’t access and so they need to be fixed.