Guild Wars 2

Now I don’t care if the frostgorge champ train likes to farm champions but when it comes to Scarlett’s Invasions you end up with entire servers of people who don’t want to succeed. Sure it’d never hostile because there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them but it still results in every Scarlett invasion being a failure.

I just want something done about this… I want to succeed and there is nothing I can do in game to do that so here I am. Trying to succeed. Can we please do something about it?

What if killing champions caused the bar to decrease? This would then make the event easier but depending on how much it caused the bar to decrease, it could lead to less champions overall.

Whatever, I believe that something should be done and there are people other than me better equipped to figure out how.

The problem here is that ANet has “trained” players to desire loot/Ap, so players will take advantage of any opportunity that offers them the best return for their time.

The event will never succeed as long as farming champs returns a better result (monthly champ slayer, champ boxes) than finishing the event. If they nerf the champs, then the motivation to do it at all becomes nil.

The only way this will be solved is if ANet:

A. Switches the focus from shinies to fun
B. Makes the end result more rewarding than the farming.

Simple solution to this problem imo:

1. No champ loot when event champs die.
2. Buff initial rewards per stage of event, including event completion.
3. To encourage enough players to play the event that champs end up spawning, as was one of the original intentions of champ loot in the first place, figure champ loot into end rewards in some way. I feel this could work best if, given these multistage events, champ chests were rewarded after the event based on how many champs the player helped kill.

Example: Scarlet invades at midnight. Not enough players there to get the event scale for champs, but enough players are there to complete the event. Event finishes, players are properly rewarded.

Example 2: Scarlet invades during the afternoon. A ton of players show up, enough to spawn champs throughout the event. No champs drop loot on death. Players complete event and kill Scarlet. Players are rewarded for event completion, and one champ box for each event champ the player helped kill during the event, scaled to exotic because they finished the event.

Example 3: Scarlet invades in the afternoon. Players are plentiful enough to cause the events to scale and include champs. Champs drop no champ loot on death. Players fail the event on phase 3. Players are rewarded based on that phase completion, and are given champ boxes according to how many champs they took down scaled to rare or masterwork for not being able to complete the event, but still being able to complete stages.

Example 4: Scarlet invades during the afternoon. Players are plentiful, but instead of attempting the event, instead try to champ farm. No champs drop champ loot. Event fails during phase 1, and no rewards are given except maybe minimal karma and coin for participation.

Solution is simple. Award champ boxes at event completion. Game already keeps track of the number of kills to award bronze/silver/gold so keep track of how many champions player killed and if event is completed successfully award that many champion boxes. If event fails award the usual fail reward.

But its anet… so its not going to happen.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

The only way this will be solved is if ANet:

A. Switches the focus from shinies to fun
B. Makes the end result more rewarding than the farming.

Hits the nail on the head.

HiSaZuL.2843:

Solution is simple. Award champ boxes at event completion. Game already keeps track of the number of kills to award bronze/silver/gold so keep track of how many champions player killed and if event is completed successfully award that many champion boxes. If event fails award the usual fail reward.

Simple and elegant, I like it.

But I do think that A) is the bigger issue than B).

Completely removing drops from champions is ridiculous, as then you have the problem which now occurs in the Claw of Jormag event, majority wait until the 2nd phase.

You remove the champion loot, and players will jump in towards the end or not bother with it at all. It’s a fine line honestly.

I would rather suggest removing the amount of Champions that spawn and keep it in small doses of champions, with more veterans instead. Spawning champions once at the beginning of each phase, and then spawning Veterans. All three phases have to be attractive for players to want to complete.

The event itself is simply not compelling enough for people to do it for fun. So most are there for the loot. If you get rid of the loot, you’d likely end up doing the event alone.

Also, the waves come only one at a time, prolonging the time it takes to clear it enough for Scarlet to come out. Presumably they did it to reduce the farming, but it just means most invasions will fail more from a lack of interest as well.

Nilkemia.8507:

Also, the waves come only one at a time, prolonging the time it takes to clear it enough for Scarlet to come out. Presumably they did it to reduce the farming, but it just means most invasions will fail more from a lack of interest as well.

This. Ever since they alternated the machines and the aetherblades/molten guys, I’ve seen fewer and fewer people even bothering to show up for the event.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

The problem here is that ANet has “trained” players to desire loot/Ap, so players will take advantage of any opportunity that offers them the best return for their time.

This is in many ways the core of the problem. Both casual players and farmers are too used to be spoon fed their loot and rewards, especially with the changes to champ loot drops. I get into debates with people during Scarlet invasions who scream and demand for everyone on the map to stack up on a single aetherblade event for “Pirate farrrmmm!!!”. I then ask them a few simple questions: one, what on earth are you going to do with all that loot anyway?? (so far about 7 out of 10 times I the responses I get are basically a “I have no idea”). Second: Is it so bad to want to finish a large scale map event that only happens once every several hours?

Then they argue that they want the most efficient money/loot gain for their time, even though you could not gain anywhere nearly as much money from farming cursed shore or Frostgorge sound champs 2 months ago.

Really is it so bad for wanting to win the invasions? You still walk away with more loot than you could possibly know what to do with if you are part of an invasion that wins and takes down Scarlet.

Antara.3189:

Completely removing drops from champions is ridiculous, as then you have the problem which now occurs in the Claw of Jormag event, majority wait until the 2nd phase.

I’ve never seen a Claw fight happen like that.

Nobody’s talking about removing champ loot: My post merely suggested it gets moved into end-of-event rewards, turning it into an incentive to clear the event.

DusK.3849:

Antara.3189:

Completely removing drops from champions is ridiculous, as then you have the problem which now occurs in the Claw of Jormag event, majority wait until the 2nd phase.

I’ve never seen a Claw fight happen like that.

Nobody’s talking about removing champ loot: My post merely suggested it gets moved into end-of-event rewards, turning it into an incentive to clear the event.

THat’s what I’m stating, moving rewards to the end, but having to fight through bosses that yield no loot will appear as a waste of time even for a reward at the end, that “might” net you something good. The difference between getting loot during an event and just getting something at the end, is that you are constantly feeding your excitement of getting something good, keeps you excited. But just mindlessly killing enemies that yield nothing is boring and players won’t want to do it.

Claw of Jormag event in my server has seen a trend where majority of people wait until the 2nd phase before fighting him. That way they still get the end reward but don’t have to put much effort in. Only a select few fight there way through the first phase.

Granted, my server’s PvE is smaller than others, but i’m sure other players wait until 2nd phase now too.

The point is, like Claw, I woudl end up being one of those select few doing the first phases with no reward. So I’m just fighting for “fun”. Sure some people just like to do events for nothing, but Majority want to feel rewarded and earn gold/gear to build their characters and do other things in the game.

If there is no reward as the event progresses, or insufficient to keep people interested, then people won’t turn up until the last few seconds .

It happens all the time on several world bosses now, most notably Jormag where the champ train ignores Jormag until the last phase and then storms in for the kill.

If no champs spawned or they didn’t drop loot then people won’t bother with invasions- sad but true.

Victory.2879:

If no champs spawned or they didn’t drop loot then people won’t bother with invasions- sad but true.

How is that “sad but true”? Don’t get me wrong, it’s definitely true but the event itself is pretty boring; all it is is a series of events where a bunch of minions spawn and stand in a field until you kill a certain number of them, then another bunch of minions spawn in another field and you run off to kill those. Once you clear enough fields, Scarlet spawns and everyone piles onto her and you win. If the meta event succeeds or fails the end result is pretty much the same: the invasion ends and life carries on as normal. It’s hardly all that interesting stuff, is it?

If it wasn’t for the champions and their loot there would be no compelling reason to do these invasions more than once or twice. The only way you can get more people interested in actually killing Scarlet is by increasing the reward for defeating Scarlet enough to make it desirable. Give an ascended item chance, get bonus boxes for downing her with time left on the clock, the more time left the more bonus boxes, that kind of thing.

The event goal is “Stop Scarlet and her minions.” It’s not “Kill as many big bads as you can in x amount of time.”

People should be playing an event with the intent to complete it. Anything that detracts from that goal-oriented play of events needs to be retooled.

The incentive to kill champs is still there: a bigger reward depending on how many champs you kill, if you keep the goal of the event in mind and see it through.

It’s all about the loot. The invasions are reasonably good content in terms of fun and involvement but the rewards are more important to a portion of the player base. The first problems are the champion loot bags. This sabotages the invasions in two ways – players would rather do a champ farm elsewhere or would rather kill aetherblade champs forever. Zergs tackling group content for group rewards (in rapid time) is a reward problem across the whole game.

The second problem is that for an hour long event it really does need good rewards. It needs to promise more dragonite (and other rewards) than an Orrian temple or Jormag event if it is going to take people out of the end game zones and into the invasion zones. The success rate needs considering there as well.

Actually the solution is to tweak the up scaling so that:

more people = more health for champions, NOT
more people = more champions

ALSO FIX, champions drop green or blue boxes instead of orange boxes when not enough people show up. The events are harder to do without a Zerg, and you are punished for trying to complete an event with just a few people but no Zerg.

“Actually the solution is to tweak the up scaling so that:

more people = more health for champions, NOT
more people = more champions"

We already do have health scaling and it is part of the problem. A group of two or three people can clear an aetherblade event+captain faster than a zerg with 3 commanders. Really! The hp scaling of the mobs is that bad already and it makes no sense to increase the hp any more.

“ALSO FIX, champions drop green or blue boxes instead of orange boxes when not enough people show up.”

This is a good idea. Players tackling portals in small numbers are taking much more risk but ultimately spend more time getting less reward.

Don’t remove drops from champs. That makes ArenaNet look like big hypocrites. “We want you to kill champions and get rewarded… oh, except for Scarlet’s invasions and Jormag.” Champions should be consistent but that’s a different topic.

Remove random spawn champions altogether from Scarlet’s invasions. Before you poop yourself in a rage fit, please read on so I can explain an option that will be good for everyone.

Keep the champions required to advance on the invasion, such as Aetherblade captains. Just get rid of the randomly spawning champions which are an automatic scaling response to the number of players. There are plenty of tough veterans to kill, anyway.

This will stop farming but it will also reduce the number of players in total to the point where the event may not succeed anyway. To solve this, there is another change I feel ArenaNet could implement:

Reduce the loot for failing the event and increase it for winning. By a lot. Like it or not, it’s human nature to play for the reward. That’s why you have champ-farming in Scarlet invasions: players will do what gives the biggest payout. But if the end rewards for winning were buffed so that a player could compare it favorably to the same amount of time spent doing something else, then players will choose to participate in—and win—the invasion.

TL;DR: remove randomly spawning champions (keep the captains as killing them advances the event), reduce rewards for failing the event, and significantly buff the rewards for winning the event.

I hope ArenaNet and players find this idea constructive and helpful.

Scarlet’s Invasions need to have some fixes to them with the aetherblade pirate farming. Some of which would be extremely easy to do.

First and probably the easiest change to make: Add 5 more minutes to the invasion duration timer (so its a total of 50 minutes). I can not tell you how many times we have failed to take down scarlet because we were just a few minutes short on time.

Second change that could be made: Move the Aetherblades wave to be last in the invasion chain. I realize this would mean you would have 2 twisted minion waves in a row, but all too often I see that after the Aetherblades wave is done and we still have the final twisted wave to go, too many of the farmers decided that the remaining 10 or so minutes is not worth their time and they leave (which is just plain wrong, you still get a lot of loot from the twisted minions)

Third change that could be made: Put a hard limit on the number of champions that can spawn from the Aetherblade Captain part. It is a big problem when you have the farming ‘commanders’ yelling to pull the Captain AWAY from the rest of the pirates so the zerg can continually kill the champs that spawn. I have seen people get yelled at who actively attack the captain (Remind anyone of the time in Cursed Shore, Gates of Arah event part, with farming the Embers and intentionally not destroying the 2 objectives?). Personally I think a hard limit of 2, maybe three champs from the Aetherblade captain phase (not counting the captain themselves) is still very generous.

Forth change that could be done: Slightly (and I mean just slightly) reduce the amount of kill/events completed for each of the 5 waves (such as instead of needing for Aetherblades to kill 10 captains, you instead need to kill). Molten Alliance phase is fine where it is at, in my opinion.

Finally: Increase the reward for finishing the invasion and taking down Scarlet, including adding Dragonite Ore to the reward.

I love Invasions and how they are all over the maps. I love it when there one of the events in a place where their are enemies hostile to the Invasion enemies (like Harathi Hinterlands) and luring the 2 sides to fight each other so we have a 3-way battle going. Invasions just need a few fixes so that everyone, even the farmers, all have the incentive to go for wining the full invasion and taking down Scarlet.

It’s an incredibly lame event, there is nothing inherently more fun about winning it than farming champs. Remove the farm and you will have nobody there.

Tremain.4623:

It’s an incredibly lame event, there is nothing inherently more fun about winning it than farming champs. Remove the farm and you will have nobody there.

This.

• The event is simply not fun enough in-and-of-itself for people to want to participate.
• There are no consequences if you lose: If you win, the invasion force disappears and the map returns to normal. If you lose, the invasion force disappears and the map returns to normal. If it’s all gonna be the same, may as well take the option that nets you the most loot.

Here’s an interesting thought: Let’s say Anet announces that Scarlet would be permanently killed off if she is defeated in over 80% of her invasions over the course of a month. I’ll bet we’d see server after server beating the event regularly.