Guild Wars 2

Anet did a great job bringing everyone to Southsun during the Living Story. There were plenty of events and rewards, and even farming was made more productive. The events, particularly the Queen event, were challenging because they required everyone to coordinate to keep the camps cleared.

But now that the next chapter in the Living Story is live, everyone has abandoned Southsun. It’s empty. Well, it’s almost empty. The monsters are still there, in very large numbers. The camps are always overrun, meaning the way points are almost always inaccessible.

The idea to get more people in Southsun long-term just didn’t take. Perhaps if the Queen were made a world boss that simply pops like all other world bosses – if the requirement to hold the four camps were removed – then people might drop in when she’s due to pop. But I haven’t seen anyone on my server (Blackgate) bother getting her to pop since the Southsun chapter of the Living Story ended. The added incentive apparently isn’t worth the trouble.

At the very least I think the zone could use some scaling back. Because the camps are always overrun, getting around is a bit of an hassle. This is especially true when crossing traveling through Steampipe Steading. That place is an absolute deathtrap if you don’t perfectly dodge all the cripple-inducing ranged attacks from the army of karka camping the place.

I think using the Living Story to entice people to visit abandoned zones is a good idea, but as people move when the next chapter goes live perhaps scaling the newly-raised difficulty (if it’s raised for the Living Story) of these zones back a bit to accommodate the lower population would also be a good idea.

if they increased the confirmed rare drops from the karka queen from 2 rares per day per account to 10 rares per day per account.

people may come?

2 rares for each camp cleared. 8 rares there.
2 rares for the karka queen take down.

I feel that the frequency of the camp attacks needs to be toned down. Currently it’s like as soon as the Karka Queen is down, you look at the meta-event and all 4 settlements are contested again. That’s just not right. It should remain clear for at least 15 – 20 mins (maybe half an hour) after the Queen event is over to at least give players a breather and savour their victory.

So on BG and also on JQ, two of the most populated servers, Southsun is a ghost town. That say’s a lot right there….

I saw this coming from a mile away. They make a meta event with hordes of the toughest mobs and the toughest set-up for the boss? People are going to go do 3 other bosses in teh same period of time with only a fraction of the hassle.

panzer.6034:

I saw this coming from a mile away. They make a meta event with hordes of the toughest mobs and the toughest set-up for the boss? People are going to go do 3 other bosses in teh same period of time with only a fraction of the hassle.

what if they increased the rewards tremendously?

get 3 confirmed rares per account per day on each camp liberated. total 12 rares there.
get another 8 confirmed rares per account per day on killing karka queen.

total 20 rares per account per day !!!

enough motivation?

If they made rewards equal the risk involved people would do these things sadly this is an issue game wide not just southsun..

Hi.

I’m writing this because I want to get the developers attention to Southsun Cove again, because now, as many predicted, now that the living story chapter of Southsun is over, it’s completely empty again.

I don’t have much time to play, but every time I logged in for the past week the zone was completely deserted. Since I usually log in bit later in the evening I thought maybe that was the problem, since I logged outside the peak hours but it’s not the case. Everywhere else on the map, people are massively doing world boss events like Shadow Behemoth, Golem Mark II, even freaking claw of Jormag!

Many players, including myself, were really pleased with changes you have done to Southsun, with introducing new events and a world boss there, because it really felt like the zone needed something like this. It was empty and boring, and during the living story arc, for a brief period of time it was FULL of players, repeating events and kicking some karka kitten . The big MF boost was probably also a large motivator.

I’ve been asking around on my server (Desolation) why people don’t go there anymore. Some said it’s because the MF boost is gone. Others that the event chain is too hard compared to other events. I agree – even Orr events are easier then this.

My problem with the current state of Southsun is now it’s not only deserted again, it’s just more annoying, the camps are constantly under karka control and nobody is even bothering to go there.

So I’ll pop in few suggestions how to make it more lively and less empty because let’s face it, it’s really sad as it is…

- Nerf Reef Drakes. Good god, this is by far the worst monster in game. Constant pulls and several stacks of confusion…I can’t remember the last time I died/went in downed mode fighting a veteran or even champion mob, but plain old reef drake can kill almost instantly. And considering there are lot of em swarming these camps I suggest that you nerf em because every time I WP there I end up being KILLED before I even load to the zone!

- Lower the requirements for Karka Queen spawn. Granted, the idea of controlling all camps is exciting, and it was definitely more doable when there were hoards of players repeating it during living story arc, but now it’s difficult to control em all at the same time now that is over. I don’t have problems with lots of mobs, in fact – the more the better (shiny loot) but it can be a problem. It’s scaling really badly.
My suggestion – keep the camp events but let Karka Queen as other world bosses spawn in a set amount of time. Like, every hour or two. OR, create an escort team of NPC-s that you will accompany in order to take 1 camp at the time across the map, leading up to Karka Queen event (similar to camp control in Malchor’s Leap)

So, that would be it from me. I really like this zone, and I hate to see it empty again. I liked doing Queen event, 2 rares +chest was a really good deal. Now just figure out how to bring back players there because nobody wants to go back there now.

I went there for the Lost Shores event on my newly 80 Engy and I survived thru the fight and got an exotic for my trouble. I was hoping for better from this return to Southsun but there was massive culling and lagging. Took a week to finally be able to kill the Queen and for my trouble I got the achievement but NO chest, nothing , nada. I am really disappointed and I do not plan to go there for the event again ever! And on my server-ET she has not been done for 360 hours, so guess that says it all. But, hey it’s new content and ppl are crying for harder content all the time on the forums, so I am glad for them. I measure risk vs rewards and Anet has been nothing but nerfs for the last 6+ months to rewards. The waypoint costs and the repair bills there hugely outweigh any reason to go IMO. Same rewards off deer, boars, insects etc as a Vet or a Champ or most of the DE’s and no use for Karma since all the vendors are dead or behind DE’s that have no rewards. LOL, none of the areas are worth much let alone Southsun atm.

Zaxares.5419:

I feel that the frequency of the camp attacks needs to be toned down. Currently it’s like as soon as the Karka Queen is down, you look at the meta-event and all 4 settlements are contested again. That’s just not right. It should remain clear for at least 15 – 20 mins (maybe half an hour) after the Queen event is over to at least give players a breather and savour their victory.

Several of the other meta events are every 2 hours or so. An event as difficult as this one shouldn’t run more often than that and maybe even less often. Maybe no more than 6 times a day, every 4 hours. Any event that restarts a few minutes after it ends is on too fast a timer. If this event isn’t done it should fail after a period of time, maybe 30 minutes. The mobs should disappear from the camps and the timer restart.

I find that the Merchants that are meant to be there when we have all four camps, aren’t all that they could be. I was hoping for the armor merchant to sell armor that looked like it was based more off the wildlife in the area. The other two of the other three just sold plain white weapons that are useless to most of if not all the player base(don’t even think you can salvage them). I think if the merchants were a bit more catered to “Southsun” experience and its environment; Players might start playing there again. Just my two cents though.

This is a constructive thread. I want to hear more. I think it not unreasonable that they offer some fine gear but that’s just me.

I agree. I believe Anet is having a hard time getting the “Reward/effort/time spent” right. Southsun Cove is the prime example of that.

Why would i go there, if i can do things with more rewards and less trouble in other places?
What kind of things could they add to make players go there? Grind with MF boost?

I don’t mind if mobs are incredibly tougher like the reef drake, as long as the loot is proportional to it’s difficulty (what it’s not the case).

ANET don’t seem to be capable of balancing risk/time with reward. Hence why Southsun and Orr are as they are and hence why CoF is like it is.

In fairness to them though, they are supposedly working on a new loot/reward system so let’s see how that one plays out.

Fenrir.3609:

ANET don’t seem to be capable of balancing risk/time with reward.

They ar unable to balance it with fun as well. Current Southsun is no fun at all.

The pre-events simply aren’t fun or rewarding.

Fighting Champion Karka for 10 minutes straight at Camp Karka is boring as hell. Not to mention unrewarding.

Issue is that you need almost the full map players numbers to hold off those hordes of lvl 84 crazed karkas on 4 different outposts attacked every 2 mins.

Something that’s not going to happen.

Tone down DRAMATICALLY the number and the dmg of mobs, and the respawn time of outposts events.
Karka queen requires more ppl than all the orr temples, dragons and boss events combined.

I really miss Southsun….I loved the intensity and aggressiveness of the events there. They seem harder, more challenging which I like.

The only one I don’t like is the most southern settlement…..that champion karka takes way too long to kill.

Aside from that, it makes me sad that the place is now pretty much abandoned. Re-introduce the 200% buff and people will soon return there in droves :-P

The problem with the events is that they are all Group Events. I had a 2 months break and wanted to enjoy the new content in Southsun, but didn’t have a chance, since the enemies are pretty strong and not for single players. Otherwise I still wonder why this zone is empty? I mean farming shouldn’t be bad. And I am on a pretty crowded server (Gandara).

PolarisNova.3867:

Aside from that, it makes me sad that the place is now pretty much abandoned. Re-introduce the 200% buff and people will soon return there in droves :-P

I’m sure some would return, but I don’t know if they would do so in droves. As long as the Living Story keeps introducing new content, new achievements, and new equipment – especially when they’re temporarily available – I don’t think Southsun’s will ever see the kind of traffic it did during the Canach’s chapter of the Living Story.

darkace.8925:

PolarisNova.3867:

Aside from that, it makes me sad that the place is now pretty much abandoned. Re-introduce the 200% buff and people will soon return there in droves :-P

I’m sure some would return, but I don’t know if they would do so in droves. As long as the Living Story keeps introducing new content, new achievements, and new equipment – especially when they’re temporarily available – I don’t think Southsun’s will ever see the kind of traffic it did during the Canach’s chapter of the Living Story.

I think this is a good point, Living Story now seems to be creating FoTM content that will attract the hordes wherever it is staged leaving the reast of Tyria, if not deserted then severely depleted of players.

People were there for the instigator only. People, for the most part, like to have fun and little grieving. Southsun now, is simply not worth the hassle.

For everyone that keeps saying “Risk vs Reward” it’s the wrong discussion. There is no risk involved. It’s simply a matter of time, effort, and annoyance vs reward, Let me go up into steampipe and snipe those lvl 84’s from 1500. THEN it’ll be fun and worth doing the rest.

They should remove the hold all four camps requirement, and add a boss timer, like three hours to the event.
Like all other events, there is always a drove of players popping into the map to do the boss event, as it is timed.
Having to first hold all four points, without a 100% guarantee that the Queen will spawn is most likely the issue here.

Just a question, if ArenaNet released a statement today saying that the Karka Queen has a 20% chance of dropping precursors what would happen?

Players would move to Southsun on mass and never leave, why? Motivation

You can make the playerbase do anything with the right motivation but here in lies the problem. With no progressive gear treadmill in place (progression I think they call it) AN are relying on the sheer fun of the game to keep players playing and keep players interested.

That raises the second problem, ok so I can’t progress my gear and work towards a better me (I’ve been wearing the same gear for 5 months)? Ok what can I work towards to fill my need to feel like my time is moving me toward a goal as opposed to killing the same mobs I’ve been killing for nine months.. what do you mean there isn’t anything?

No matter how well you dress an MMO up by its very definition it’s a largely repetitive and soul destroying grind and no MMO has ever changed this. The ONLY reason why WoW is still going is for the loot, the never ending gear hunt. I agree it’s bobbins, Id rather not have it but unless you replace gear motivation with other type of motivation people get bored very fast.

The only way around this is to let players craft their own bit of world. Player housing, building farms, making meaningful gear/items and giving players the ability to “affect the world in a very perminant way” (I’ve heard that before somewhere…

Guild Wars 2 is a theme park MMO so it doesn’t have any of that and we are not gonna get any, any time soon. I love this game and enjoy it very much but I so wish for some new and innovative ideas.

Kerin.9125:

darkace.8925:

PolarisNova.3867:

Aside from that, it makes me sad that the place is now pretty much abandoned. Re-introduce the 200% buff and people will soon return there in droves :-P

I’m sure some would return, but I don’t know if they would do so in droves. As long as the Living Story keeps introducing new content, new achievements, and new equipment – especially when they’re temporarily available – I don’t think Southsun’s will ever see the kind of traffic it did during the Canach’s chapter of the Living Story.

I think this is a good point, Living Story now seems to be creating FoTM content that will attract the hordes wherever it is staged leaving the reast of Tyria, if not deserted then severely depleted of players.

I agree…….but in some ways, at least those of us who want to enjoy the 200% buff can do so. And as someone else said, perhaps if they could introduce some events that don’t require groups to kill all the karka, or just decrease the intensity of the karka.

Genophix.3098:

Just a question, if ArenaNet released a statement today saying that the Karka Queen has a 20% chance of dropping precursors what would happen?

Players would move to Southsun on mass and never leave, why? Motivation

You can make the playerbase do anything with the right motivation but here in lies the problem. With no progressive gear treadmill in place (progression I think they call it) AN are relying on the sheer fun of the game to keep players playing and keep players interested.

That raises the second problem, ok so I can’t progress my gear and work towards a better me (I’ve been wearing the same gear for 5 months)? Ok what can I work towards to fill my need to feel like my time is moving me toward a goal as opposed to killing the same mobs I’ve been killing for nine months.. what do you mean there isn’t anything?

No matter how well you dress an MMO up by its very definition it’s a largely repetitive and soul destroying grind and no MMO has ever changed this. The ONLY reason why WoW is still going is for the loot, the never ending gear hunt. I agree it’s bobbins, Id rather not have it but unless you replace gear motivation with other type of motivation people get bored very fast.

The only way around this is to let players craft their own bit of world. Player housing, building farms, making meaningful gear/items and giving players the ability to “affect the world in a very perminant way” (I’ve heard that before somewhere…

Guild Wars 2 is a theme park MMO so it doesn’t have any of that and we are not gonna get any, any time soon. I love this game and enjoy it very much but I so wish for some new and innovative ideas.

This one speaks the truth.

I think it should be the other way around.
All world bosses should require some work (actual challenge like SC, not the current pre-events) for them to spawn.
Maybe with the exception of some low lvl ones like FE…

The thing is, if you give players (the farmer ones) the slight advantage on anything, they will do it non-stop and forget about anything else.
So buff SC and the rest of the world will be empty, even if its a 0.1% increased chance for a exotic, or some fake MF boost.

Well, before Karka Queen there were people here in the forums asking for harder world bosses so that they would require large coordinated groups and more work to kill. Even without better rewards. They got one. Seems to be very popular.

Be careful what you wish for because you might get it.

Ameepa.6793:

Well, before Karka Queen there were people here in the forums asking for harder world bosses so that they would require large coordinated groups and more work to kill. Even without better rewards. They got one. Seems to be very popular.

Be careful what you wish for because you might get it.

Sometimes i wonder if those were “reverse trolls”, asking for more and more difficulty to grief those that actually play the game.

Ameepa.6793:

Well, before Karka Queen there were people here in the forums asking for harder world bosses so that they would require large coordinated groups and more work to kill. Even without better rewards. They got one. Seems to be very popular.

Be careful what you wish for because you might get it.

How very true .. it seems to me many of those calling for more ‘challenge’ have no desire for a moment for it to happen, they’re bluffing when they post such things in the expectation Anet won’t actually do it, they call for it to try to appear superior players .. cases like this show that given such content they run a mile in the opposite direction.

Zaxares.5419:

I feel that the frequency of the camp attacks needs to be toned down. Currently it’s like as soon as the Karka Queen is down, you look at the meta-event and all 4 settlements are contested again. That’s just not right. It should remain clear for at least 15 – 20 mins (maybe half an hour) after the Queen event is over to at least give players a breather and savour their victory.

I completely agree. It seems they are still running on the same frequency as when there were 100 people in the zone to defend all of them. There arent. Whenever I popped my head in there after the story ended, it was always 1/4 camps.

They need to tone down the mob activity to account for the significantly less amount of people in the zone. Not sure why they didnt see this coming.

Ameepa.6793:

Well, before Karka Queen there were people here in the forums asking for harder world bosses so that they would require large coordinated groups and more work to kill. Even without better rewards. They got one. Seems to be very popular.

Be careful what you wish for because you might get it.

I have two reactions to this. First, there are no doubt those who want challenging content. But the people who hop from one world event to another are generally doing so for easy money, not challenging content. And there may be those who want to be challenged, but if the challenged is presented as a group event that too few want to do then those wanting the challenge aren’t getting what they wanted.

Second, the difficulty of the event isn’t self-contained. It has an impact on the entirety of the zone. Everything from harvesting runs to simple things like using way points to get around the zone are impacted by this one event. This one event has a disproportionate impact on the zone as a whole, in my opinion.

That place just needs a little bit of attention to scaling and some rewards.

Apparently they’re working on a better reward system across the board.

Don’t hold your breath though, you might get hypoxia.

They need to make it into a fully working, fully sized zone. It needs map completion, more areas/events/content, more waypoints. Basically it needs to function as every other zone.
And connecting it properly to the adjacent zones wouldn’t hurt too.

I think Living Story is either a bad idea, or at least badly implemented. I haven’t been to Southsun since it was introduced (took a break during the second event). Are there any permanent events or permanent world bosses like Shadow Behemoth which reward a rare + a chest? If not, Anet should add such things. I also think Anet should create a permanent dungeon there designed like all the others to have 1 story path and 3 explorable paths with a unique set of armor and weapons to earn.

They should certainly stop adding new things to Lions Arch, no matter how temporary. The player base is clustered there enough already due to the portal hub, mystic toilet, and Fractals dungeon.

Living stories are just their way of getting people to play a game thats getting to be as boring as watching paint dry.

They need to nerf the difficulty of the mobs in Southsun. I understand that they wanted to create ‘challenging’ mobs but if they don’t make any changes to the rewards then naturally people will go for the easiest, most rewarding route.

Of course though, if Anet really wanted people to play in certain zones, they would just allow farming, but we all know that won’t happen…

Put a chest in each of the 4 side events and leave the queen reward the same. That would be a good draw. The problem also seems to be the speed required for removing the 4 blocking events and how fast they come back after the queen is killed.

ANet’s PVE intent seem to be that we all should be roaming explorers, rather than farm specific events or areas until to roll over in exhaustion. Esthetics over substance in other words.

Yargesh.4965:

Put a chest in each of the 4 side events and leave the queen reward the same. That would be a good draw. The problem also seems to be the speed required for removing the 4 blocking events and how fast they come back after the queen is killed.

Not only after queen is killed. The attack events seem to spawn as fast (or faster) as you can do one reconquer. That’s why you needs groups to cover all of the camps at once (knowing that two of the groups likely won’t make it for the Queen event, dying instead in Steampipe to huge masses of karka spawns).

just wanted to say that it’s a good thing that a world boss is difficult, but the risk – reward ratio isn’t good enough. It’s good that Anet is working on new rewards.

What I don’t like: MOAR rare loot. This won’t bring players to those difficult events. I would suggest a progression on each of those bosses where you can work on either

• specific precursors
• specific skins only available if the boss was killed + I would add achievements for those bosses which are a requirement to be able to get those skins.

there has to be a specific reward so that you want to do this specific boss. If not, people just go to the easiest of the bosses and farm those, equivalent to dungeons: CoF1.

In my opinion they should change it so that the four camps flip to be karka infested then an event chain kicks off that requires escorting an NPC group to liberate the four camps (in a set order) and afterwards the queen should spawn. This pattern works quite well in Orr.

The liberated camps should not be attacked by karka while the event chain is running and a chest of some sort should spawn in all four camps to entice people to do the pre-event (no guaranteed rares or anything just a regular chest) and not just pop to the nearest waypoint when the queen spawns.

Just making the settler eq sold by the merchants having their own skins would help. Ultimately though, the rewards alone won’t be enough without fixing the events themselves – there’s just too much problems with them.

digiowl.9620:

ANet’s PVE intent seem to be that we all should be roaming explorers, rather than farm specific events or areas until to roll over in exhaustion. Esthetics over substance in other words.

The problem with wanting us to be roaming explorers is the things we need for the things we want (T6 mats, ori nodes, etc) are only found in a few very specific zones. If I could get the stuff for my Gift of Wood from Queensdale, Wayfarer Foothills, or any of the other lower level zones, I would never leave them. They’re more relaxed, more populated, and aesthetically pleasing. But the stuff I need can’t be found in those zones.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

• specific skins only available if the boss was killed + I would add achievements for those bosses which are a requirement to be able to get those skins.

Interesting idea, so kill the Shatterer a large number of times and then you get a set of Shatterer/branded skins to purchase for a nominal fee? I like that idea.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

just wanted to say that it’s a good thing that a world boss is difficult, but the risk – reward ratio isn’t good enough. It’s good that Anet is working on new rewards.

What I don’t like: MOAR rare loot. This won’t bring players to those difficult events. I would suggest a progression on each of those bosses where you can work on either

• specific precursors
• specific skins only available if the boss was killed + I would add achievements for those bosses which are a requirement to be able to get those skins.

there has to be a specific reward so that you want to do this specific boss. If not, people just go to the easiest of the bosses and farm those, equivalent to dungeons: CoF1.

Yes, let’s reward lots of precursors and flood Lion’s Arch with legendary weapons.

Pifil.5193:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

• specific skins only available if the boss was killed + I would add achievements for those bosses which are a requirement to be able to get those skins.

Interesting idea, so kill the Shatterer a large number of times and then you get a set of Shatterer/branded skins to purchase for a nominal fee? I like that idea.

but only if you’ve got the achievements too Just standing there autoattacking won’t bring you anywhere.

Vol.5241:

Yes, let’s reward lots of precursors and flood Lion’s Arch with legendary weapons.

who said anyone about getting precursors fast? It’s a progression system where you can work on a specific precursor you want… which takes time but you won’t get a random one. Like the Pre for Incinerator for doing the Fire Shaman. Not a random drop but a progression system like (random number) 100 gold medal kills. (+ give gold only for people who won’t get downed + hit the boss a minimum amount of times (heals and revives count towards this counter)… not a minimal amount of damage because this would mean: Berserker-gear > everything else.

better than the mystic toilet gamble if you ask me

People seriously want 10-12 rares or a high chance for freaking precursors for doing those events on Southsun? LOL.

The reason people aren’t at Southsun right now is a combination of a number of factors.

~ No holograms on Southsun
~ Reduced Coffer drops on Southsun
~ People are tired of the place after spending a whole month there (probably, I know I pretty much did) during Last Stand
~ New limited-time dungeon available
~ New limited-time achievements available

There are a lot of things encouraging people to be in other places doing other things than hanging around Southsun right now. I don’t think its nessicarily anything to do with Southsun itself. It could be, or it could not.

In order to really gauge whether Southsun is an attractive option to people or not, we need a period when there’s no event ongoing at all. Or at the very least a “slow period” like what we had at the start of Flame and Frost. One of the problems with events every month is that they’re always “enticing” people to some location or another, so you never really get a chance to see where people gravitate too if they’re just left to their own choices.

Ghettoblade.7962:

Living stories are just their way of getting people to play a game thats getting to be as boring as watching paint dry.

Only boring if you are one of those people who rushes through the game to lvl 80 and then think you are done. There’s so much more to the game then getting to lvl 80 and getting rares… I intentionally make myself walk sometimes just to see the sights and absorb the world rather than have it flash by as I run from point to point. Makes the game so much more enjoyable.