Guild Wars 2

Jerus.4350:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Ohoni.6057:

But there should be. And again, your definition of “easy” is not the same one I’m using. I am NOT arguing that you should just be able to faceroll content, that it should not take effort, skill, and perhaps practice to be successful at it. What I am saying is that once you know everything there is to know, once you have YOUR skills on point, you should be able to engage the content, do your best, and win without a bunch of standing around or set-up hassles.

You’re mistaking the difference between solo content, and group content. If you have the skills to succeed at solo content (ala Liadri), then yes you deserve to be able to go in and succeed. But if you have the skills and knowledge to your part in Group content, now you’re just one piece of the puzzle. There is no “i” in team.

Just like with the Great Wurm. I know what to do, but I can’t go in by myself, and solo down all three wurms. You need people in the correct spots, who all know what to do.

Ohh no? XD

Here. Take it. That’s all the internets I have.

You’re mistaking the difference between solo content, and group content. If you have the skills to succeed at solo content (ala Liadri), then yes you deserve to be able to go in and succeed. But if you have the skills and knowledge to your part in Group content, now you’re just one piece of the puzzle. There is no “i” in team.

Like I said, tactical, not strategic. I don’t mind having to share responsibility with my own group, with the people within eyeshot of me that are all working on the same short term objectives. I don’t mind that if those people do poorly then I don’t get the best rewards. At least I don’t mind much. But dozens and dozens of people spread across an entire map are too many people for my personal fate to be tied to. If I can’t talk to you in say chat then you shouldn’t have any baring on the outcome of my gameplay experience. I do not see that as being good content, and I’m asking that they stop making it.

Just like with the Great Wurm. I know what to do, but I can’t go in by myself, and solo down all three wurms. You need people in the correct spots, who all know what to do.

And just like with the Great Wurm, the reward should be based on the wurm you’re fighting, and on how well you do at it, rather than on what people halfway across the map are up to.

Ohoni.6057:

And just like with the Great Wurm, the reward should be based on the wurm you’re fighting, and on how well you do at it, rather than on what people halfway across the map are up to.

No.

Saint.5647:

Jerus.4350:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Ohoni.6057:

But there should be. And again, your definition of “easy” is not the same one I’m using. I am NOT arguing that you should just be able to faceroll content, that it should not take effort, skill, and perhaps practice to be successful at it. What I am saying is that once you know everything there is to know, once you have YOUR skills on point, you should be able to engage the content, do your best, and win without a bunch of standing around or set-up hassles.

You’re mistaking the difference between solo content, and group content. If you have the skills to succeed at solo content (ala Liadri), then yes you deserve to be able to go in and succeed. But if you have the skills and knowledge to your part in Group content, now you’re just one piece of the puzzle. There is no “i” in team.

Just like with the Great Wurm. I know what to do, but I can’t go in by myself, and solo down all three wurms. You need people in the correct spots, who all know what to do.

Ohh no? XD

Here. Take it. That’s all the internets I have.

:D It’s my favorite of the “you can never unsee this” things.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

I can get behind the GW1 District dropdown box idea. That’s the only difference between the current Megaservers, and GW1’s town districts.

Yet it’s the difference between easy to use and horribly frustrating, terrible, as well as user unfriendly.

Ohoni.6057:

And just like with the Great Wurm, the reward should be based on the wurm you’re fighting, and on how well you do at it, rather than on what people halfway across the map are up to.

And you do get rewarded for killing your wurm head. If the other groups don’t kill theirs, you get a nice Bronze or Silver chest. If you want the Gold chest + Mega chest at the end, then the map needs to down all three heads.

I don’t honestly mind this current event’s dynamic so much. It’s not super hard to get tier 3 with even a small group doing events right (getting the bonus favour), and tier 3 to tier 4 isn’t a SUPER huge difference where you’d never get it without tier 4 (and if you’re worried about time, get the things you can only get from tiers 3/4 NOW, because tier 2 definitely isn’t that hard to get, and you can at least still get those when the event drops in participation.

Just as long as they don’t go back to the end of S1 and the requirement of needing the map to work together and take down the Assault Knights and subsequently the Prime Hologram in order to see the story.

That being said, what I think they should have done is made it a permanent track that unlocks the tiers forever, just with more work required, and that everyone contributes to. That way, it doesn’t matter which map you’re on, and you could never be “locked out” from the items.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

The main problem here is that there are so many players who want to get the best stuff, but don’t want to take the time to organize or coordinate themselves. These types of players are prevalent in all MMOs. We call them leechers.

A true leech would join a map and AFK at the merchant until t4 hits, then buy cheap goods and split.

And you do get rewarded for killing your wurm head. If the other groups don’t kill theirs, you get a nice Bronze or Silver chest. If you want the Gold chest + Mega chest at the end, then the map needs to down all three heads.

I’m sorry, I just don’t see the benefit to that rule in an open world event with a map cap. The only way I can see this working right is if you could queue up for an instanced version of the map that ONLY included the Wurm events, so that everyone who tries to enter is there for one and only one reason, and with a UI that does a better job of making clear which groups need more members and which are overloaded. It also has too much of a DPS check to it, the wurms should not have as much HP as they do.

I don’t honestly mind this current event’s dynamic so much. It’s not super hard to get tier 3 with even a small group doing events right (getting the bonus favour), and tier 3 to tier 4 isn’t a SUPER huge difference where you’d never get it without tier 4 (and if you’re worried about time, get the things you can only get from tiers 3/4 NOW, because tier 2 definitely isn’t that hard to get, and you can at least still get those when the event drops in participation.

I just spent a couple hours on Dry Top, one run that was a middling T3, and then one where I was able to taxi in to a T4 run. They were like night and day. In the latter I was able to travel in a pack of 2-3 times the numbers of the “random” T3 map, I ended up completing way more events, and the events during the dust storm were awarding 10 geodes each, so I racked up a TON of geodes over the course of that run, probably 2-3 times more in total than during the latter run.

What was different? Just more people who knew where to go and bothered to do so. That’s it. If there were a method for players who were not explicitly attempting a T4 run to be able to self-select OUT of T4 capable maps, remove all non-event content from the maps like harvest nodes, lost coins, jump puzzles, story chapters, etc. and just make it a pure event-circuit, and then let players queue up for that mode, then I think it would work a lot better.

A true leech would join a map and AFK at the merchant until t4 hits, then buy cheap goods and split.

Honestly the bonus loot is a bigger deal than the shop savings, and you need to clear events to receive those.

I agree with what Smooth Penguin said.

A MMORPG (of all games) should not allow you to succeed solo, no matter how skilled you are, in group content if your group does not want it to succeed. Played ought to and should need to play together.

The very essence of MMO-gaming is that you are constantly interacting with the other players. On group content, this means that that the group is only as useful as they can be when playing together.

It follows that it makes no sense to allow any single person to control the outcome of the fight (a crucial mistake in the Marionette fight :P ).

A MMORPG (of all games) should not allow you to succeed solo, no matter how skilled you are, in group content if your group does not want it to succeed. Played ought to and should need to play together.

Perhaps, but IF that is so, then the game needs to provide a framework in which you can effortlessly choose to only associate with people who are interested in joining that challenge. If an event requires 130+ well coordinated people to complete it, and you have the desire to be one of those people, then the game’s design is obligated to provide you with those 129+ other people at your demand, otherwise it’s unreasonable to expect that of you. It’d be like serving someone a juicy steak and withholding any utensils from them.

The content should be a challenge, accumulating a group that is willing to attempt it should never be one. You should never log into the game and load into a map of Dry Top, intending to do a T4 run, and end up with a bunch of people collecting Coins, running story missions, attempting the jumping puzzle, etc. They have every right to do those activities, but they should be doing them on a different map than you loaded into if you were looking to do a T4 run. If the game can’t effortlessly provide that experience then it shouldn’t expect that of you.

Further, while I accept and even embrace the need for some other people to be involved in the outcome of the fight, I don’t see the value in factors outside of the tactical level entering into it. By that I mean, if I’m in Dry Top and I’m fighting a boss, and everyone around me is for whatever reason incompetent, and we fail that boss fight, then fair enough, I was there, I did my best, it wasn’t enough to overcome their worst, we lost, but at least we tried. However, if the group I’m with fights through five events and clears them all, but the map as a whole, outside my reach, fails to accomplish much else and we still end with T3, then where is the benefit to that? Things outside your reach, on the strategic level, should not impact your own level of reward. No single player can completely determine the outcome of a group encounter, but each player should at least be an active part in the outcome, rather than having whole portions of the outcome be determined by factors over which he has no influence at all.

I cited that as a flaw in the original marionette fight, that four platforms out of five could succeed effortlessly, but if even one wiped, entirely outside their control, the entire thing would collapse. A more appropriate system would allow players on cleared platforms to reinforce failing ones, or at the very least would have been based on a “best of five” rather than “all of five” element, so that one or two failing platforms could not invalidate the efforts three or four strong ones.

Yeah, I feel like they need to stop trying to make raids out of megaservers. If they want to make big multi-person coordination events, just make the kitten ed raid with the tools for organizing people. Otherwise, just stop it.

I know they might lose their hipster cred if they make the “R” words, but there’s a reason MMOs do it. If you want a big multi-person coordinated event, you give people the tools to organize a big multi-person coordinated event.

Ohoni.6057:

Perhaps, but IF that is so, then the game needs to provide a framework in which you can effortlessly choose to only associate with people who are interested in joining that challenge. If an event requires 130+ well coordinated people to complete it, and you have the desire to be one of those people, then the game’s design is obligated to provide you with those 129+ other people at your demand, otherwise it’s unreasonable to expect that of you. It’d be like serving someone a juicy steak and withholding any utensils from them.

You’re describing a single-player game. In a single-player game it’s the game’s job to provide the party / army / group / friends / whatever you need to succeed.
A good single-player game will again make you reliant on party members to a degree, but insofar that they patch up gaps in your own character stemming from your specialization (oldschool party RPGs are an example here, if a rather simplistic one).

In a social-centred game like a MMORPG, the whole point is to let players do this. Provide a world in which the players can play. What they do their is their thing. If they want to organize, they can. If they don’t, they won’t.
The whole idea behind MMORPGs was to provide a persistent world to enable a more freeform way of roleplaying. Player-driven and all that.

It makes no sense if the game then enforces more than the minimum of limitations. Although I get what you’re saying, I’m not sure the game you’ll have afterwards is still what I’d consider a MMORPG. It feels more like automated party-matchmaking, which as WoW has shown removes all meaning from the partying itself.
At that point, I really don’t get the point of even requiring a group. If it’s automatically provided for you, why even require it? But if you remove the requirement, then you no longer have a MMO.

The solution is IMO to go back to the borebones design which brought forth MMOs. To the central idea: Provide a world. Add challenges to it. Of varying kinds. Let players lose onto the world. See what they do, and sometimes adapt the game mechanics as players discover cracks in your design. But for the most part, let them create the gameplay elements from the way they interact.

You’re describing a single-player game. In a single-player game it’s the game’s job to provide the party / army / group / friends / whatever you need to succeed.

And the same is true of a multiplayer game, just with more players.

Now, if you want to play with your friends, if you want your friends to be part o that 130+ player group, then of course the tools should allow you to include them, and then it would only need to fetch the remainder, but it should fetch whatever remainder is needed to complete the challenge. And if you just want to log in and play with whomever else happens to want to do the same thing as you at the same time, then it’s the game’s job to find those people and link you together.

If you want to play with your friends, or even with a 130+ person guild, then that’s fine, you should be able to do that and the game should get out of your way when you do, but if you just want to log in as yourself and be able to participate in all the same content, then the game should support that too. That’s the most core thing that I loved about this game over any other MMO (and I’ve played almost all of them), which is that it was social without being constricting. You could just lot in, see an orange ring, run over there, have a bunch of people around, and without having having to form a party you could play together, you helping them, them helping you, all seamlessly working together on a shared objective, pure cooperation, and then as soon as someone had something else they’d rather be doing, they could do so without overly burdening everyone else, and maybe some other people would show up.

That, to me, is the beating heart of GW2, and yet over the past year or so they seem to be creeping more and more towards the corrupted heart that is at the core of some other MMOs, that priorities elitism and mega-guilds, forcing lock-step organization and pre-planning, rather than just letting players log in and have fun. The more they move in that direction, the less it is the game that I loved, and I guarantee they can’t win that way, because the people who most prefer that sort of game are the ones that quit early on and are never coming back because they’ve been doing WoW raids the entire time.

Carighan.6758:

Ohoni.6057:

Perhaps, but IF that is so, then the game needs to provide a framework in which you can effortlessly choose to only associate with people who are interested in joining that challenge. If an event requires 130+ well coordinated people to complete it, and you have the desire to be one of those people, then the game’s design is obligated to provide you with those 129+ other people at your demand, otherwise it’s unreasonable to expect that of you. It’d be like serving someone a juicy steak and withholding any utensils from them.

You’re describing a single-player game. In a single-player game it’s the game’s job to provide the party / army / group / friends / whatever you need to succeed.
A good single-player game will again make you reliant on party members to a degree, but insofar that they patch up gaps in your own character stemming from your specialization (oldschool party RPGs are an example here, if a rather simplistic one).

In a social-centred game like a MMORPG, the whole point is to let players do this. Provide a world in which the players can play. What they do their is their thing. If they want to organize, they can. If they don’t, they won’t.
The whole idea behind MMORPGs was to provide a persistent world to enable a more freeform way of roleplaying. Player-driven and all that.

It makes no sense if the game then enforces more than the minimum of limitations. Although I get what you’re saying, I’m not sure the game you’ll have afterwards is still what I’d consider a MMORPG. It feels more like automated party-matchmaking, which as WoW has shown removes all meaning from the partying itself.
At that point, I really don’t get the point of even requiring a group. If it’s automatically provided for you, why even require it? But if you remove the requirement, then you no longer have a MMO.

The solution is IMO to go back to the borebones design which brought forth MMOs. To the central idea: Provide a world. Add challenges to it. Of varying kinds. Let players lose onto the world. See what they do, and sometimes adapt the game mechanics as players discover cracks in your design. But for the most part, let them create the gameplay elements from the way they interact.

The problem with WoW’s auto matchmaking is you didn’t get you decide who you partied with, you just sort of got thrown in to a group. Exactly whats happening right now with megaservers but with none of the raid niceties. Right now we have the worst of both worlds.

GW2 went the right direction with the current LFG tool. You can see who is in groups and choose to join groups.

However GW2 bit the kitten when it comes to trying to shoehorn large organized events that totally aren’t raids into the megaserver system.

Ohoni.6057:

Now, if you want to play with your friends, if you want your friends to be part o that 130+ player group, then of course the tools should allow you to include them, and then it would only need to fetch the remainder, but it should fetch whatever remainder is needed to complete the challenge.

I feel that this idea simply cannot feasibly work.
Take what you say there, it effectively means I can bring a group of slackers and the system is forced to carry me through the content.

Because if you say no, bad play from me should allow the event to fail, then WLOG you are describing the Marionette situation, which is a more strict version of what we have now in general.

A manual grouping tool, yes, we need that. Drop-down list of current megaserver instances for example.

Or you know, put the totally not raids in instances and let people form large parties to fight them.

Rukh.9287:

Or you know, put the totally not raids in instances and let people form large parties to fight them.

This was about how to organize the open world fights, not how to make the world itself worse. :P

Another vote for selectable maps like GW1 districts.

Ohoni.6057:

~~~snip ~~~

The main issue here is that you think a “Group Event” is equivalent of “Solo Content”. GW2 allows you to play the game solo all you want, but if you want to succeed in “Group Content”, you need a Group to do it. Makes sense, no? The Great Wurm needs a group of organized players. So does Dry Top T4. So does RPing with the Tarnished Coast community.

Reality check time. MMOs are a social beast. Just because you don’t want to interact with others doesn’t mean they don’t exist. You have up to 149 other players on the same map as you whom you can’t control. If everyone wants to get to T4 level rewards, a large majority of them need to work together to meet the meta requirements. Until you realize this fact, you’ll probably have a hard time getting max rewards in this game.

LFG is working great for me when I want to find a T4 map.

I think the map is a good balance – doesnt require the organization of something like Boss Blitz or the Marionette – but still offers incentive to tacitly work together.

I dont think every zone should use this exact same mechanic, but having maps where we can do this is a nice addition.

It seems like these zone events are really designed for 20-40 people, not 150.

The main problem with Boss Blitz was scaling from too many people, it was easy with 4-6 on each boss, and absolute chaos once more than 10 arrived (with the map cap there could easily be enough for 20+ at each boss).

Dry Top events seem to be mostly do-able by groups of 2-6 competent players. With 9 different (I think) events which contribute to Zephyrite favor, that’s only about 40ish players required out of 150. Some of the bosses may need more, but there is time to group up for them after clearing the easier events.

Just like the other hard fights (Teq, Marionette, BB, etc.) I expect the level of random organization to increase over time.

I feel that this idea simply cannot feasibly work.
Take what you say there, it effectively means I can bring a group of slackers and the system is forced to carry me through the content.

Not really. There’s no real way that it could absolutely guarantee success without basically making it faceroll, but it should at least guarantee a CHANCE at success. It should be able to guarantee that you won’t end up on a map with people achievement hunting or doing the living story or just goofing around, but that you are JUST grouped with people who are intending to make a T4 run. Currently, if you end up on a random map with people all doing their own thing, you have ZERO chance of getting to T4. All I’m saying is, you should have the option of self-selecting out of that group and into a group that is at least actively attempting the goal you want.

Now as with a TTS-built CP map, failure would still be a possibility, but at least with better matchmaking systems the game could make success more likely.

The main issue here is that you think a “Group Event” is equivalent of “Solo Content”. GW2 allows you to play the game solo all you want, but if you want to succeed in “Group Content”, you need a Group to do it. Makes sense, no? The Great Wurm needs a group of organized players. So does Dry Top T4. So does RPing with the Tarnished Coast community.

The main issue here is that you’re missing my point entirely. I am by no means confusing group content with solo or vice-versa.

If everyone wants to get to T4 level rewards, a large majority of them need to work together to meet the meta requirements. Until you realize this fact, you’ll probably have a hard time getting max rewards in this game.

Yes, which is the entire point of my proposals, to make a game in which this works better than it currently does.

It seems like these zone events are really designed for 20-40 people, not 150.

Yes, but to get T4 you basically need to be running two of these evens at once, sometimes three, and then when you finish you need to get to another one immediately that might be across the map. In any case, you need more active participants than I’ve ever seem on a map that I’ve been randomly logged into.

I was on a T4 map last night that had a group of maybe around 15 to 20-ish people circuiting the crystal shard event (making sure to get the bonus favour for not letting them score) to Tootsie to Nochtli to Prosperity Mine (again making sure to get the bonus favour for not letting one die), and possibly another couple people picking up the root event (which is super easy to even get the bonus favour if you solo it) and the Plume (I think that’s her name) event. I don’t think anyone did the Abandoned Mine events as the door was always closed when I went by.

You definitely don’t need as many people as you did to even have a hope at breaking a SINGLE chain at Marionette, and definitely less than it took to get to see the story after the Prime Hologram.

Ohoni.6057:

I feel that this idea simply cannot feasibly work.
Take what you say there, it effectively means I can bring a group of slackers and the system is forced to carry me through the content.

Not really. There’s no real way that it could absolutely guarantee success without basically making it faceroll, but it should at least guarantee a CHANCE at success. It should be able to guarantee that you won’t end up on a map with people achievement hunting or doing the living story or just goofing around, but that you are JUST grouped with people who are intending to make a T4 run. Currently, if you end up on a random map with people all doing their own thing, you have ZERO chance of getting to T4. All I’m saying is, you should have the option of self-selecting out of that group and into a group that is at least actively attempting the goal you want.

Now as with a TTS-built CP map, failure would still be a possibility, but at least with better matchmaking systems the game could make success more likely.

The main issue here is that you think a “Group Event” is equivalent of “Solo Content”. GW2 allows you to play the game solo all you want, but if you want to succeed in “Group Content”, you need a Group to do it. Makes sense, no? The Great Wurm needs a group of organized players. So does Dry Top T4. So does RPing with the Tarnished Coast community.

The main issue here is that you’re missing my point entirely. I am by no means confusing group content with solo or vice-versa.

If everyone wants to get to T4 level rewards, a large majority of them need to work together to meet the meta requirements. Until you realize this fact, you’ll probably have a hard time getting max rewards in this game.

Yes, which is the entire point of my proposals, to make a game in which this works better than it currently does.

It seems like these zone events are really designed for 20-40 people, not 150.

Yes, but to get T4 you basically need to be running two of these evens at once, sometimes three, and then when you finish you need to get to another one immediately that might be across the map. In any case, you need more active participants than I’ve ever seem on a map that I’ve been randomly logged into.

The actual issue here is that you feel you should be able to get max rewards in Group Content, because you know what you’re doing (as per your previous posts). That is the reason why I feel you don’t understand the argument you’re making. Top tier Group Content rewards means various requirements are met by various people. If 1 out of 5 or 4 out of 5 groups aren’t successful, you still get a reward, but at a lesser level. Max rewards are for when everyone is successful.

I can get behind changes that allow large groups to organize better. The dropdown box with server IPs would make things work well with our TTS runs. Rather than taxiing to get everyone in, we could secretly pick a specific map IP to use. The Megaserver formula can’t take into account large community groups that have 5,000 players across multiple guilds.

What they need to do for these large organized events that are totally not raids is make a way to start a new megaserver which is totally not an instance and provide a LFG section for your specific megaserver which is totally not an instance. People don’t get added automatically, only by joining up with you. Of course, it needs to be a group bigger than a party. We could call it a “shmaid group” so people don’t think its one of those lamestream raid things.

Some interesting thoughts on all of this. Here’s my two cents: This content is open world raiding. I like that it’s a group thing that requires a bit of organization without the headache of a classic raid. The headache though is that not everyone in the “raid” cares if the event gets the maximum desired effect. That to me is the flaw. I am tired of being the new iterative experiment on the part of the designers. I find the new map mechanics and content to be irksome. I LOVE the way the map is laid out though.

Overall thought: Rewards should be given out on an individual basis due to participation and people that are leeching or AFK should be left out. Put in effort and get rewarded.

Just make servers into districts already so that we can easily find the map that is actually trying.

And their megaservers that are totally not instances are capped at a certain population. They cap quickly because there other people in the zone that want to do the other things in the zone there are to do. Can’t blame them for that, but it does mean you can’t just port in a bunch of your own people if it’s capped.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

The actual issue here is that you feel you should be able to get max rewards in Group Content, because you know what you’re doing (as per your previous posts). That is the reason why I feel you don’t understand the argument you’re making. Top tier Group Content rewards means various requirements are met by various people. If 1 out of 5 or 4 out of 5 groups aren’t successful, you still get a reward, but at a lesser level. Max rewards are for when everyone is successful.

I can get behind changes that allow large groups to organize better. The dropdown box with server IPs would make things work well with our TTS runs. Rather than taxiing to get everyone in, we could secretly pick a specific map IP to use. The Megaserver formula can’t take into account large community groups that have 5,000 players across multiple guilds.

No, the actual issue here is that he wants tools that allow people to organize better. For like-minded individuals to find each other in the same not-an-instance of the megaserver to work together towards common goals. Buy, say, having a drop down allowing you to to select which instance you want to go to, where you know other people are trying to organize a run. Or where you now people aren’t organizing a run, so you can pick flowers in peace.

This is about having tools for people to group together, in the context of the megaserver. Which is something people can do, currently, by creating overflows, taxi-ing, etc., but it should not be that complicated. This type of organization is a major aspect of certain types o content now. The game should provide tools for people to organize themselves, without having to use convoluted workaround to all end up in the same spot. What we have here is essentially an open world raid, so give the raid members the ability to find each other and get into the same instance. That’s what it boils down to.

Yeah, it seems like a lot of luck to find a massive group coordinated enough to participate at some level. Personally, I think the massive world events are bad – not conceptually, but just as a design. The problem with it stems from the lack of coordination and organization someone can do – even if you try to organize, people won’t always listen/care – they’re there to play the game they want to play.

Simple solution is pretty simple – allow guilds to purchase instance tickets from the gem store (oh no, gem store items) – 2000 gems (gold to gem conversion is still a thing). It can be a collaborated, guild effort to purchase a private instance to complete large scale events in without the hassle of randoms that want to (and should be able to) play their own way.

Furthermore, change drop rates a bit. Would need a complete overhaul, but I’m sure most of the community would be willing to accept some changes unless they are blinded by their own shortcomings. Something like Gold Blitz shouldn’t be significantly more rewarding than the Gauntlet. Likewise they could offer this sort of principle in dungeons as well – having starting bases of, say, around 1% for rare drops (such as Precursors) that lowers for every person in the party. Then, somebody who solo’d Arah would have a much higher chance of obtaining a Precursor or any other Exotics than someone who simply found a PUG.

You definitely don’t need as many people as you did to even have a hope at breaking a SINGLE chain at Marionette, and definitely less than it took to get to see the story after the Prime Hologram.

True, but then the balance is that the meta-event isn’t quite as well coordinated, since you don’t have the “lanes” or “Knights” to attract attention, there are just a bunch of events that you may not even notice. I didn’t even know that there were the Vine and Basket events for the first couple of days. It would be better if they had a map-wide view of all active events.

The actual issue here is that you feel you should be able to get max rewards in Group Content, because you know what you’re doing (as per your previous posts).

Yes. Always.

That is the reason why I feel you don’t understand the argument you’re making.

I understand the argument I’m making. The problem is that you don’t seem to understand the argument I’m making, which is why I have to keep trying to restate it in new and simpler ways.

If 1 out of 5 or 4 out of 5 groups aren’t successful, you still get a reward, but at a lesser level. Max rewards are for when everyone is successful.

Just in general, I think it’s a bad idea to expect perfection. I prefer content that expects competency. On the smaller level, for example, there are achievements that expect perfection, like the Nochtili one from this LW. If you dodge/bypass 100% of her launchers, you get an achievement, if you only dodge 99% of them, you get no achievement. I do not enjoy challenges like this at all. I prefer challenges that count up your successes, “avoid 20 of her attacks,” to ones that only reward a complete lack of fails.

On the more macro levels, I prefer ones that stack up successes to those that only count a lack of fails. The Dry Top meta works fine for that, you stack up successes, although I think it needs to do a better job of matchmaking players to ensure the maximum number of engaged players. With the marionette, the largest scale of the event “take out five strings” was a good challenge, a “stacking up successes” challenge, and it would reward partial completion, offering 4 chests for getting 4/5 strings, but the mid-tier challenge, “clear the five platforms,” was a punishing imperfections challenge, in which you could have 4/5 platforms cleared and get ZERO credit towards the meta, and could in fact get 4/5 on three attempts in a row, ending up with a respectable 12/15, and still get nothing. I would not change the highest scale element of it, but I would change the middle, by making the platform phases “best 3/5,” rewarding the majority for succeeding, rather than punishing them because the minority failed. It would still be possible to fail the event, but only if the majority of players involved dropped the ball, which is more fair to all involved.

Some interesting thoughts on all of this. Here’s my two cents: This content is open world raiding. I like that it’s a group thing that requires a bit of organization without the headache of a classic raid. The headache though is that not everyone in the “raid” cares if the event gets the maximum desired effect. That to me is the flaw. I am tired of being the new iterative experiment on the part of the designers. I find the new map mechanics and content to be irksome. I LOVE the way the map is laid out though.

Yes. I get that a lot of this new content is essentially “raid” content, and that the rest fo the game is not designed to handle it. I don;t want raiding to be a normalized thing though, because I don’t believe in the elitism it generates, where only a set clique can participate. I think that whatever match-making system they generate, it should be based on allowing anyone in who want in. The filter should be to filter out players who don’t actually care, who have no interest in participating.

That’s the problem Dry Top has, it’s basically like a restaurant that has a full menu, and can only seat twenty tables, and if fifteen of those tables choose the fish then everyone gets free desert. Well in a normal breakdown, you would reasonably expect people to choose all sorts of other options, and the chances of 3/4 of the room picking the fish would be slim, sucks for all the people that wanted free desert.

Simple solution is pretty simple – allow guilds to purchase instance tickets from the gem store (oh no, gem store items) – 2000 gems (gold to gem conversion is still a thing). It can be a collaborated, guild effort to purchase a private instance to complete large scale events in without the hassle of randoms that want to (and should be able to) play their own way.

No. It should not be a guild thing, it should not be an expensive thing. This is a basic function of the game and the solution needs to be a basic function of the game, not a P2W premium.

Likewise they could offer this sort of principle in dungeons as well – having starting bases of, say, around 1% for rare drops (such as Precursors) that lowers for every person in the party. Then, somebody who solo’d Arah would have a much higher chance of obtaining a Precursor or any other Exotics than someone who simply found a PUG.

No, this would just further stratify expert players from inexpert players.

please fix the game so that i can go afk and still get gold reward pls….

/endsarcasm

Ohoni.6057:

Just in general, I think it’s a bad idea to expect perfection. I prefer content that expects competency.

Well isn’kitten very good balance then that Dry Top is made so that if even 30% of the players know what they’re doing, it’ll hit T4?
As you say, expecting perfection is bad. They learned from Marionette that making any single person able to fail the event from not caring or not being able to perform is a bad thing.

So here we are (well in fact, LA’s events showed this), and only a small portion needs to play well now. The rest can participate, or may choose not to.

This seems to already be exactly what you ask for. It doesn’t segregate off worse or less experienced players, it doesn’t force perfection, it doesn’t force specific zone instancing, no nothing. It’s fairly easy to get T4, tbh.

please fix the game so that i can go afk and still get gold reward pls….

/endsarcasm

Good thing that’s over, now let’s get back to constructive solutions to the problems at hand . . .

Well isn’kitten very good balance then that Dry Top is made so that if even 30% of the players know what they’re doing, it’ll hit T4?

That certainly hasn’t been my experience. In my experience, it takes a dedicated “T4” map that clears almost every event, most of them with bonus objectives, to reach T4. Any server I’ve been randomly placed on barely makes it over the T3 hump.

So here we are (well in fact, LA’s events showed this), and only a small portion needs to play well now.

The LA knights were the same way, if the map you were on was not mostly dedicated to taking them down and doing it right, then they were just not going down. The server I was on at the time gave up entirely after the first couple days, and I had to guest to a more populous one to complete it.

This seems to already be exactly what you ask for. It doesn’t segregate off worse or less experienced players, it doesn’t force perfection, it doesn’t force specific zone instancing, no nothing. It’s fairly easy to get T4, tbh.

I have still never once hit T4 on a map that I didn’t taxi into that was specifically organizing itself for that purpose. I’ve gotten a few low T3s, but that’s about it. The runs I’ve done where I have taxiied into a T4-intending map have been easy enough, the goal should be to make that process fairly automatic.

Ohoni.6057:

The LA knights were the same way, if the map you were on was not mostly dedicated to taking them down and doing it right, then they were just not going down. The server I was on at the time gave up entirely after the first couple days, and I had to guest to a more populous one to complete it.

Huh? After the patch 1 week in I cannot quite remember not seeing them go down unless you were on a rather empty overflow. You just needed 3 people to tag up.

But come to think of it…
That patch mostly added the mechanics to the event tooltip. So maybe, again, therein lies the issue (as with Pavilion).

If the zone tooltip had an overview of active events and you could see them from afar and their status, we might see a lot more people get what it’s about and how to do it.

Ohoni.6057:

~~~ snip ~~~

After reviewing your previous posts, the conclusion that I get is that you want easy mode. You want max rewards from “Group Content”, regardless if the group is successful. You want to automatically be able to get into the best maps, because you feel you deserve to play with people who are as good as you. You’re not satisfied with anything less than a perfect run, and the only guaranteed way to control the outcome is for you to do it all by yourself.

Problem with all of this: You’re playing with a Single Player mindset in a multiplayer game. I think it’d be best that you stick to content that’s actually made for you. Things like your Personal Story, and the Queen’s Gauntlet when it comes out. You can get your max rewards for each step of your story that you complete, or get Gauntlet Chances each time you kill Liadri.

It’s a rare thing to see someone misunderstood and patronized to the extent that’s happening in this thread. It’s hard to believe it doesn’t involve a sizeable amount of disingenuity.

Manasa Devi.7958:

It’s a rare thing to see someone misunderstood and patronized to the extent that’s happening in this thread. It’s hard to believe it doesn’t involve a sizeable amount of disingenuity.

Oh, like I said in the start, my problem personally is simply that I think the system trying to make you succeed just because you yourself succeed on a personal level is the last thing a multiplayer-centric game should do.

If you want to win, team up with players who also want to win. As such, my only complain to ANet here is a lack of dropdown-selected instance of a zone.

The whole point of a MMO is to interact with the other players. Find likeminded people to play with. If someone wants to farm T4, they ought to find a group of players who also want to farm T4.

One day for the Queen’s Gauntlet I went into a map that was just starting to fill. A few of us started working towards organizing and pushing towards gold. We did a few rounds and the map started getting better and better, eventually winding up at silver and getting close to gold. Then, after about two hours, I had to go. I never saw gold.

That is the problem I have with the way these events are designed. A person can put in a lot of effort that will eventually pay off later, but if that person isn’t able to stay logged in for hours and hours then that payoff never shows up for that person.

This may be a completely original and not thought of idea so hear me out.

The game has these things called guilds. Someone who wants to regularly do these coordinated meta events could start a guild specifically to do that and invite other people that wish to do so. Scheduled times can be posted on the MOTD so everyone knows when to be on and ready. You then find an somewhat empty server and ferry people over. You can use TS or other voice chat programs to coordinate if necessary.

Why hasn’t anyone thought of doing this? Oh wait… they have. A lot of the successful servers (ahem, mega servers) do this.

Ayrilana.1396:

This may be a completely original and not thought of idea so hear me out.

The game has these things called guilds. Someone who wants to regularly do these coordinated meta events could start a guild specifically to do that and invite other people that wish to do so. Scheduled times can be posted on the MOTD so everyone knows when to be on and ready. You then find an somewhat empty server and ferry people over. You can use TS or other voice chat programs to coordinate if necessary.

Why hasn’t anyone thought of doing this? Oh wait… they have. A lot of the successful servers (ahem, mega servers) do this.

I find it very stupid to be forced to join another guild just because I don’t want to end up on an empty megaserver. I am faithful to my guild.

Zanshin.5379:

Ayrilana.1396:

This may be a completely original and not thought of idea so hear me out.

The game has these things called guilds. Someone who wants to regularly do these coordinated meta events could start a guild specifically to do that and invite other people that wish to do so. Scheduled times can be posted on the MOTD so everyone knows when to be on and ready. You then find an somewhat empty server and ferry people over. You can use TS or other voice chat programs to coordinate if necessary.

Why hasn’t anyone thought of doing this? Oh wait… they have. A lot of the successful servers (ahem, mega servers) do this.

I find it very stupid to be forced to join another guild just because I don’t want to end up on an empty megaserver. I am faithful to my guild.

It’s a guild specifically for these events. The majority of people don’t use these guilds as their main guild. They log on and rep the guild while doing the guild run events. When they’re done, they go back to their guild. If you feel you should not use any of the widely useful features that are already in the game then that’s your choice.

Just remember that your complaints and demands for changes will hold less weight since it’ll come off as you wanting changes to be made to suit your personal needs rather than those of the community. There are already ways in the game to organize for these events which many players have taken advantage of.

Zanshin.5379:

I find it very stupid to be forced to join another guild just because I don’t want to end up on an empty megaserver. I am faithful to my guild.

You can be in 5 guilds at once. I also have a social-level guild, which is my “main” guild. But for Worm/Tequatl, I briefly represent TxS. They’re a purpose-built guild for the raid-level events. They also do Dry Top at times, but I haven’t had time to join them on that yet.

Zanshin.5379:

I find it very stupid to be forced to join another guild just because I don’t want to end up on an empty megaserver. I am faithful to my guild.

If your current guild does not want to assist you in doing Group Content, don’t you think it would be a good idea to join a guild with like-minded players? As the other player said, you can have multiple guilds at once. Rep your current one to be with your friends, and rep the other one should you want to do stuff like T4 Dry Tops, or Gold BB, or raids like Teq and the Great Wurm.

I’ve been enjoying my popcorn while the debate rages on. It’s been entertaining

I’m more or less in agreement with this quote from Ayrilana:

Ayrilana.1396:

This may be a completely original and not thought of idea so hear me out.

The game has these things called guilds. Someone who wants to regularly do these coordinated meta events could start a guild specifically to do that and invite other people that wish to do so. Scheduled times can be posted on the MOTD so everyone knows when to be on and ready. You then find an somewhat empty server and ferry people over. You can use TS or other voice chat programs to coordinate if necessary.

Why hasn’t anyone thought of doing this? Oh wait… they have. A lot of the successful servers (ahem, mega servers) do this.

I haven’t wanted to join a guild, and so I am accepting of the fact that this can and does greatly limit my ability to do certain things in the game.

The only place the quote loses me, and this may just be my own ignorance of how to go about it, is “You then find an somewhat empty server . . . .”

How does one do that with the existing tools?

My reading of what the OP has been asking for, is for better tools to do exactly this part. Am I missing something obvious?

Raven Twospirit.9342:

I haven’t wanted to join a guild, and so I am accepting of the fact that this can and does greatly limit my ability to do certain things in the game.

The only place the quote loses me, and this may just be my own ignorance of how to go about it, is “You then find an somewhat empty server . . . .”

How does one do that with the existing tools?

My reading of what the OP has been asking for, is for better tools to do exactly this part. Am I missing something obvious?

You have several people go to various maps until you find one that appears empty. You then ferry everyone onto it. I’m usually joining after a mega server is found but perhaps someone that does this regularly can explain better than me.

Changing the server you guest on influences which mega server you end up on. Normally the guilds built around doing mega events tend to have members from many servers so this normally isn’t necessary. Mega server maps also have a cap so you can kind of force a new one for the map like an overflow in the old server system. Again, I’m sure someone else could explain better than me.

Raven Twospirit.9342:

I’ve been enjoying my popcorn while the debate rages on. It’s been entertaining

I’m more or less in agreement with this quote from Ayrilana:

Ayrilana.1396:

This may be a completely original and not thought of idea so hear me out.

The game has these things called guilds. Someone who wants to regularly do these coordinated meta events could start a guild specifically to do that and invite other people that wish to do so. Scheduled times can be posted on the MOTD so everyone knows when to be on and ready. You then find an somewhat empty server and ferry people over. You can use TS or other voice chat programs to coordinate if necessary.

Why hasn’t anyone thought of doing this? Oh wait… they have. A lot of the successful servers (ahem, mega servers) do this.

I haven’t wanted to join a guild, and so I am accepting of the fact that this can and does greatly limit my ability to do certain things in the game.

The only place the quote loses me, and this may just be my own ignorance of how to go about it, is “You then find an somewhat empty server . . . .”

How does one do that with the existing tools?

My reading of what the OP has been asking for, is for better tools to do exactly this part. Am I missing something obvious?

The Megaservers have an internal formula that groups similar players together. Server specific players are more likely to be grouped with the same server specific players (i.e. Blackgate players are given preference to play with other Blackgate players). German speaking players will more likely be grouped with other German speaking players. Guildies will more likely be grouped with other guildies. Existing maps are filled with players based on the formula, and new maps are created once existing maps are full.

Here’s how you get around the current system. You purposely flood an existing map by taxiing in friends or guildies. Once that map is capped, the server creates a new shard. Players attempting to join that particular map are then send to the new one, and once there, players are then taxied in to the “clean” map. Previously, large groups would guest to servers with low PvE activity, and create new maps based on that server.

If you’re a solo player, or if you’re in a guild with players who don’t want to do the Group Content you want to do, you need to find a way to get into a map with like-minded players. This is hard to do if you don’t have friends. That’s why it’s recommended that you join a guild that specializes in doing Group Content. TTS and TxS are good examples of Community based guilds that span multiple servers. Servers like Desolation have a large community specifically for their server.

Thank you, Ayrilana and Smooth Penguin!

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Raven Twospirit.9342:

I’ve been enjoying my popcorn while the debate rages on. It’s been entertaining

I’m more or less in agreement with this quote from Ayrilana:

Ayrilana.1396:

This may be a completely original and not thought of idea so hear me out.

The game has these things called guilds. Someone who wants to regularly do these coordinated meta events could start a guild specifically to do that and invite other people that wish to do so. Scheduled times can be posted on the MOTD so everyone knows when to be on and ready. You then find an somewhat empty server and ferry people over. You can use TS or other voice chat programs to coordinate if necessary.

Why hasn’t anyone thought of doing this? Oh wait… they have. A lot of the successful servers (ahem, mega servers) do this.

I haven’t wanted to join a guild, and so I am accepting of the fact that this can and does greatly limit my ability to do certain things in the game.

The only place the quote loses me, and this may just be my own ignorance of how to go about it, is “You then find an somewhat empty server . . . .”

How does one do that with the existing tools?

My reading of what the OP has been asking for, is for better tools to do exactly this part. Am I missing something obvious?

The Megaservers have an internal formula that groups similar players together. Server specific players are more likely to be grouped with the same server specific players (i.e. Blackgate players are given preference to play with other Blackgate players). German speaking players will more likely be grouped with other German speaking players. Guildies will more likely be grouped with other guildies. Existing maps are filled with players based on the formula, and new maps are created once existing maps are full.

Here’s how you get around the current system. You purposely flood an existing map by taxiing in friends or guildies. Once that map is capped, the server creates a new shard. Players attempting to join that particular map are then send to the new one, and once there, players are then taxied in to the “clean” map. Previously, large groups would guest to servers with low PvE activity, and create new maps based on that server.

If you’re a solo player, or if you’re in a guild with players who don’t want to do the Group Content you want to do, you need to find a way to get into a map with like-minded players. This is hard to do if you don’t have friends. That’s why it’s recommended that you join a guild that specializes in doing Group Content. TTS and TxS are good examples of Community based guilds that span multiple servers. Servers like Desolation have a large community specifically for their server.

That works, but god is it a pain. And best to get that mapload functionality to see if the new map you’re loading into is the clean one, or just some other half empty one left over. We should be fighting content, not the servers.