I would love to see these world events entertaining only a fraction of the crowds they attract now (who are there for all the wrong reasons). I choose quality over quantity every time. This whole loot pinata thing is just ruining the entire sense of adventure this game was supposed to have. I’ll even suggest that it’s introducing elements that are counter to the philosophy of the game. Those bosses are like open-world resources, and we’re now practically competing over them as we fight to see who can out-camp whom, with the loser ending up cursing on an overflow map. And not because we care about the boss or the event, but because we want that loot drop.
The only complaint there is in this thread – I (or my friends) end up in overflow because others where there before me (or my friends) and I (friends) don’t want to wait 20 minutes. Because if you (and friends) would be “adventuring” on the map already – you (and friends) would not have this problem.
OP even acknowledged that the situation was like this before even when the loot was mediocre – but that is not a complaint because – there was no overflow.
Yes it’s not ideal and I believe they are working on the capacity of the maps. I would love less lag, I would love a bit more variety in the fight – less pinata, for sure – but that hasn’t really changed – what should be looked at is scaling of the events.
The main premise though: Everyone get’s to see the dragon.
If we got rid of timers, then people camping out for the events would do one of two things:
- Stop camping out there in real-time, but leave an alt there and wait for a buddy to tell them it started.
- Camp there 24/7 and wait for it to start.
Some would, not all. The amount of people willing to do that is drastically lower than people who go ALT+TAB google Dragon Timer, select server – ALT TAB back to game, map to next dragon – repeat.
You’re correct. Some would . . . and I’ve actually seen people abandon at Claw of Jormag because it wasn’t going down fast enough so they could go to Tequatl or Shadow Behemoth.
Sadly, I don’t think there’s much you can do to discourage them.
Then also change the location of the events, make them “Random”…gasp.
Stop trying to be clever and think you can “score points” on me. One, I don’t care. Two, you shouldn’t either.
The events have specific locations for a long laundry list of reasons, and these are now nigh impossible to change without serious reworking of the whole game landscape. On top of that, there is a not-insignificant challenge to having the fights change location while still being interesting and not having one encounter be easier than another . . . or more accessible . . . or some other reason people would do that event instead of the five others.
Variables and random chance are all fine and good, but they’re really not a friend to people trying to put together a large-scale battle.
Not trying to score points at all. Been posting about the dragon “battles” for quite awhile and why they are broken in there current form. I’m too lazy to copy pasta earlier posts.
Not trying to score points at all. Been posting about the dragon “battles” for quite awhile and why they are broken in there current form. I’m too lazy to copy pasta earlier posts.
I haven’t seen a single game suitably handle this problem. Well there was one, but it was so patently unfair I don’t want it emulated.
Copied from an earlier thread: Dragons are so mind numbingly stupid (stand in one place and auto attack). If there is any one thing that is broken with this game it’s the dragons, on a kitten timer at that. Zero challenge, faceroll skill involved, absolutely the same exact thing every single time you fight one in the same exact place on a clock. A legendary process it ain’t. I feel more challenged from a skritt.
Not sure how doing the exact same thing for anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes is fun. Dragon fights are mechanical and offer very little player input besides “stand here and auto attack or use bazooka 1” I enjoyed it the first time, but the tenth time? The twentieth? Got old real quick. The only reason people do them after that many times is for the chest, not fun.
They need to get rid of the current dragon encounters, make them roaming, use an actual mob model instead of a building model, and make them dangerous and unpredictable. Make them crash DE’s, low level zones…hell, any zone. I’d be hilariously happy if they attacked cities. And don’t put em on a frakkin timer.
I was specifically talking about the open world dragons/events that give chests like the Shatterer and Frozen Maw, not the regular group events you find around the world.
Maw is definitely soloable. Did that on my lv 50/60ish elementalist a while back.
Shatterer would be more difficult due to the crystals but that is dodgeable. The biggest challenge on the dragons is just whittling down their huge health pool. I’ve yet to encounter Tequatl with less than 5 people around and with the recent changes that is not likely to happen any time soon.
These group event do not differ much from other group events in terms of difficulty. When I say group event I mean the ones that are specifically labeled as group events with the “[Group event]” tag in their description. Not all events are group events.
I played one game . . . one game . . . where big boss monsters could crash in at any time in certain parts. It was fun/interesting the first few times. Then it became highly freaking annoying.
Same series also handled big boss fights happening in a variety of locations. Surprise, it wasn’t quite entirely random but predetermined places where there was enough space to fight in. To do that would require GW2 to have been built with that idea and there would have been semi-obvious “boss battle locations” people would have scoped out to watch.
I don’t want them trying those here, I don’t think a translation of those fights over here is a good idea because it would be a immensely unpopular change.
@ killcannon – agreed, but that part hasn’t really changed, right?
The only thing that has changed is the fact that they are now a tad more popular because of the loot – especially the shadow behemoth since it has a very unique drop.
Which is why this comes up now (or maybe more then before and is more interesting), because it’s more visible. Before – done that, ok, nothing all to special, lag etc – ok, won’t go out of my way to go there again. I’m all for changing the events/fights to become more interesting and flowing nicer – but it’s no argument to make them not drop loot or make them entertaining only a fraction of the population.
@ killcannon – agreed, but that part hasn’t really changed, right?
The only thing that has changed is the fact that they are now a tad more popular because of the loot – especially the shadow behemoth since it has a very unique drop.
Which is why this comes up now (or maybe more then before and is more interesting), because it’s more visible. Before – done that, ok, nothing all to special, lag etc – ok, won’t go out of my way to go there again. I’m all for changing the events/fights to become more interesting and flowing nicer – but it’s no argument to make them not drop loot or make them entertaining only a fraction of the population.
The events should drop loot. But they shouldn’t be on a timer. Timer encourages farming, farming draws people out of the game world to concentrate in certain areas, people not congregating at the events think world is dead, eventually everyone just farms six or seven events.
Solutions are to either make these encounters enjoyable from a game play point of view, or to get rid of timers so they can not be farmed on a clock, or both. Timers are bad in and of themselves, spontaneity is much more fun from a game play perspective. But you should indeed get fat lootz from doing a challenging encounter. Removing reward from these encounters would indeed be a mistake. They just need to be less predictable.
An anecdote from my time playing WoW that resembles my ideas for dragons would be when the faction wars from Southshore and Tarren Mill would bring in high level players from all over the world when one of those two towns were under attack. For a game based around reward the way WoW was, that little non scripted event always drew players in simply because it was fun. Dragons could be like that in some instances, with npcs announcing around the world that such and such dragon is on the way to such and such town.
The problem is with farming, and farming goes away with unpredictability.
I played one game . . . one game . . . where big boss monsters could crash in at any time in certain parts. It was fun/interesting the first few times. Then it became highly freaking annoying.
Same series also handled big boss fights happening in a variety of locations. Surprise, it wasn’t quite entirely random but predetermined places where there was enough space to fight in. To do that would require GW2 to have been built with that idea and there would have been semi-obvious “boss battle locations” people would have scoped out to watch.
I don’t want them trying those here, I don’t think a translation of those fights over here is a good idea because it would be a immensely unpopular change.
Fun and challenging game play would be immensely unpopular, gotcha.
Random spawning would only encourage camping of the spawn area.
The proposed replacement rewards are not rewarding enough. Unless a buff is “too good,” people hardly notice them. Also, open world PvE is easy enough that such a this-zone buff is going to be seen as not worth the effort. Locking map areas away behind an event is an interesting mechanic, but the current manifestations of this are complained about (CoF and Arah, for instance). Adding more such will not go over well and will be perceived as a punishment for not doing the event rather than a reward for doing it.
My suggestions for rewards that might inspire players to participate in these events “for the right reasons” are just examples, and I’m sure any designer worth his or her salt could come up with many better ones.
That said, if these “lures” only attract 10-15 players to these events.. mission accomplished. I’m not looking to create a situation where players are coming from all over the world to participate in one of these events. That’s the problem we have now. And I’ll take quality over quantity every time. It’s not difficult to get roughly a half-dozen to a dozen players who happen to be in the zone to participate in an event.. I see this at practically any basic event already, and none of them offer boss chests as a reward. At any given time there’s probably around 5 players just adventuring in the area a boss event happens to spawn who are likely to jump in.
You know, a few months back I saw that Tequatl and Jormag were in their spawn window at the same time. I knew most people would go to Jormag, so I went to Tequatl. I was standing there on the beach looking at maybe 6 other players waiting for his spawn and, for the first time, I got nervous and excited about this fight. I was thinking “this is going to be fantastic.. finally a real fight with Tequatl”. I changed my traits and skills to be more group oriented and supportive, I started reviewing the abilities on the turrets.. this was going to be awesome!
Then Jormag ended and several dozen people from that event showed up on the beach before Tequatl had a chance to spawn. I sighed and switched back to my DPS loadout, waited for him to spawn, chose him as my target and hit my “1” key and sat back waiting to collect my treasure.
I don’t want 20, 30, 50, 100 people at these events. Especially when they’re showing up not to have fun and be challenged, but because of the all mighty loot carrot. There is enough content in this game to occupy people without sacrificing these boss events.
OP even acknowledged that the situation was like this before even when the loot was mediocre – but that is not a complaint because – there was no overflow.
Why do people seem to believe that nobody visited these events prior to the February loot patch? Because that was certainly not my experience. I could show up at any dragon event and find close to 30 people standing there waiting anytime in the past few months. And even then they weren’t there for the dragon, they were there hoping they’d score a rare or better. You could tell by the amount of griping that went on about unlucky loot post-kill.
I guess maybe some of you didn’t bother with these events prior to the February patch, but you’re mistaken if you’re assuming crowds weren’t already camping them. All the patch change did was make it more worthwhile (from the perspective of someone already standing there for the loot), while also luring some stubborn holdouts out of the woodwork.
I didn’t like the events then and I don’t like them now. Had you read my posts you’d understand that.
(edited by Edge.4180)
OP even acknowledged that the situation was like this before even when the loot was mediocre – but that is not a complaint because – there was no overflow.
Why do people seem to believe that nobody visited these events prior to the February loot patch? Because that was certainly not my experience. I could show up at any dragon event and find close to 30 people standing there waiting anytime in the past few months. And even then they weren’t there for the dragon, they were there hoping they’d score a rare or better. You could tell by the amount of griping that went on about unlucky loot post-kill.
I guess maybe some of you didn’t bother with these events prior to the February patch, but you’re mistaken if you’re assuming crowds weren’t already camping them. All the patch change did was make it more worthwhile, and I guess lure some stubborn holdouts out of the woodwork.
Well, that’s what I’m saying – why do you think then that eliminating the loot totally would be a “solution” – and worse, at what cost?
There needs to be something added (mechanics, technical/server, maybe story) – not taken away.
Edit: To your edit – I’ve read your op a few times – again I don’t find your solution of making the events uninteresting for people who don’t share your sense of enjoyment viable. I even agree with you (the sentiment of adventure vs pinata)! I would love the whole mechanic to be changed in some way, said that a few times now – but definitely not by taking away.
(edited by Rouven.7409)
I don’t agree with locking out certain parts of the land.
as if the dragon/event don’t get done that part will be locked all the time,just look at orr before the chest change.
I do agree one rare per chest,as i’v seen ppl get three that is to much.
I don’t agree with the change of not getting a rare,if you earned the right to open the chest then you should be rewarded.
Also ppl who are complaining are prob the ones who are gold farmers,or tp controllers.
There just not enough rewards in this game imo,the chests are the only way of def getting a rare.
btw i don’t do the dragons,but still the amount of events i do in orr,im lucky to get one rare all day unless i do grenth or mel.
Well, that’s what I’m saying – why do you think then that eliminating the loot totally would be a “solution” – and worse, at what cost?
There needs to be something added (mechanics, technical/server, maybe story) – not taken away.
I think once you remove loot from these encounters you remove the players who are only attending these events for loot.. and I am perfectly fine with them not being there.
That leaves people who happen to be in the zone, or in the area. And if the event is even remotely entertaining, they’ll come. They already do, even with basic events, even though the only guaranteed reward is just some coin, some XP, and some karma.
These boss events can be completed with a dozen people. They don’t need 20, 50 or more players there saving the day. My fondest encounter memories in this game are not these dragon fights where a ridiculous amount of players spam attacks, but instead cool tactical battles where maybe three players win against a champion.
Heck, if it were up to me I would disallow waypoint travel into a zone once one of these boss events started, maybe even shutting down all the waypoints in the vicinity of these boss events as well to slow down reinforcements and encourage people to play smarter.
Well, that’s what I’m saying – why do you think then that eliminating the loot totally would be a “solution” – and worse, at what cost?
There needs to be something added (mechanics, technical/server, maybe story) – not taken away.
I think once you remove loot from these encounters you remove the players who are only attending these events for loot.. and I am perfectly fine with them not being there.
That leaves people who happen to be in the zone, or in the area. And if the event is even remotely entertaining, they’ll come. They already do, even with basic events, even though the only guaranteed reward is just some coin, some XP, and some karma.
These boss events can be completed with a dozen people. They don’t need 20, 50 or more players there saving the day. My fondest encounter memories in this game are not these dragon fights where a ridiculous amount of players spam attacks, but instead cool tactical battles where maybe three players win against a champion.
Heck, if it were up to me I would disallow waypoint travel into a zone once one of these boss events started, maybe even shutting down all the waypoints in the vicinity of these boss events as well to slow down reinforcements and encourage people to play smarter.
Shutting down way points could work… to a degree. It just means people will be showing up sooner for the event.
Well, that’s what I’m saying – why do you think then that eliminating the loot totally would be a “solution” – and worse, at what cost?
There needs to be something added (mechanics, technical/server, maybe story) – not taken away.
I think once you remove loot from these encounters you remove the players who are only attending these events for loot.. and I am perfectly fine with them not being there.
(…)
Well, I’m sorry, but that’s a pretty egocentric view and not likely in the interest of the game. Scale the events so they get “harder”/more complex as more people participate sure, saying I want only people who share my sense of adventure being there – simply doesn’t work in an MMO.
First off locking down a portion of the map to give people a reason to beat a boss would not work. It would only take one time to unlock it, and then people would demand that there be stuff in there that made it worth doing. The rate of overcome to move on would be blindingly fast.
Second, I rather resent the pre assumption that Dungeons must be the only way or no one would do them. People will do dungeons when its fun to do, as in useful drops and awards for content in the whole of the dungeon. Nerfing outside content to try to force people to do more dungeons is a recipe for failure and I have seen this in a lot of games [MMO addict since early 2002]. Also it doesn’t stop with that , what happens is early dungeons begin to get bypassed then entire areas gradually abandoned for the most part. Players who are on the fast track mentality will take the fastest rout and move on if there and are likely in guilds that pressure them to do so even if they don’t see it.
Outdoor content gives people who are not connected to each other by guilds to enjoy group content with out pressure. Its an insanely great idea. Not only can people practice their skills working with others outside the pressure and sometimes psychodrama but often players do not feel like they are good enough to do dungeons until they improve their gear. With out the fun of playing dramatic content outside dungeons and pvp a lot of people would just leave, including my self.
I wouldn’t want GW2 to become yet just another mmo with dungeon grinds and not much else.
I think once you remove loot from these encounters you remove the players who are only attending these events for loot.. and I am perfectly fine with them not being there.
Well, I’m sorry, but that’s a pretty egocentric view and not likely in the interest of the game. Scale the events so they get “harder”/more complex as more people participate sure, saying I want only people who share my sense of adventure being there – simply doesn’t work in an MMO.
Is it egocentric? Do you think any designer works on what s/he hopes will be an epic boss encounter and thinks “I hope the players are psyched about farming this for loot”. Or are they designing the encounter hoping players show up because their creation is cool, fun, and epic?
And, unfortunately, I don’t current technology in this game allows for epic battles that support 50 players.. so.. what do you do? Either keep them lame, or you scale them back to lure only a reasonable amount of people, and for the right reasons.
So you want to make these events disrupt the map to such a significant effect as to make things extremely inconvenient for everybody playing the game….but you also want to remove all of the loot from these events so that people don’t feel even slightly inspired to bother doing them?
You basically want to force people to do the events or suffer the consequences, rather than doing them for the enjoyment or loot?
I….honestly have no idea what to say to this, so I’ll simply make one point:
You do realize that the primary reason most people don’t kill event-spawned Champion mobs in the world’s many maps is because they provide almost no valuable loot, right? May want to consider that before you suggest removing ALL open-world content loot from EVERY area in the game.
You are basically suggesting the death of all open-world event running.
Outdoor content gives people who are not connected to each other by guilds to enjoy group content with out pressure. Its an insanely great idea. Not only can people practice their skills working with others outside the pressure and sometimes psychodrama but often players do not feel like they are good enough to do dungeons until they improve their gear. With out the fun of playing dramatic content outside dungeons and pvp a lot of people would just leave, including my self.
What skills are you testing at these encounters?
And the following goes as well for the people who think they deserve loot after one of these boss fights.
Let’s look at the Shadow Behemoth. When the boss spawns, this is what players do:
1) Stand at distance and target its face.
2) Press your 1 key to enable auto-attack
3) When it leans forward past you to create portals, turn your character to point in its direction to allow auto-attack to continue.
4) When it leans back to its original position and can no longer be targeted, target nearest portal and press your 1 key to enable auto-attack.
5) When the portal is destroyed one second later, return to step 1.
Repeat that two or three times until boss is dead, collect loot, and then come to forum to complain about how you deserve better drops for your troubles.
Who are we kidding? Apparently the developers, since they keep making the drop rate better.
I don’t understand your logic. Apparently they are working on their technical limitations, so let’s hope they find a better solution that will improve those encounters. That I hope we can agree on.
Add more.
Make which pops random.
Make them actually affect the world like the Avatars do.
When Tequatl is up, I dunno why I should care outside of loot to begin with.
The loot is too good (srs) but if it wasn’t for the loot there wouldn’t be much ramifications (world wise) to ignore it.
Some of the other world events are pretty ignorable just because they don’t have a Giant mega boss at the end.
(edited by ensoriki.5789)
I agree with CriticKitten, the loot should not be removed from these dragons.
I disagree with the motion of randomizing location = disrupting the map.
Having a dragon battle take place randomly when you are in the map shouldn’t be an inconvenience, it should be an epic/awesome surprise! You’re casually adventuring when Oh kitten! There’s a dragon!! At that point either fight or run. What’s the big deal?
To me that sounds cooler than currently:
Login
→ GuildMember: Maw is up <links waypoint>
→ click waypoint, map to location, party with guild member
→ Barely get 3 spells off before Champion dies because 10000x people are killing it. Still get Gold for hitting it 3x
→ Loot chest
→ GuildMember2: Teq up
Repeat
I still do it cuz the events are fun and epic, but they’d be a lot more fun and epic if they weren’t so facerolled and predictable.
So you want to make these events disrupt the map to such a significant effect as to make things extremely inconvenient for everybody playing the game….but you also want to remove all of the loot from these events so that people don’t feel even slightly inspired to bother doing them?
You basically want to force people to do the events or suffer the consequences, rather than doing them for the enjoyment or loot?
I….honestly have no idea what to say to this, so I’ll simply make one point:
You do realize that the primary reason most people don’t kill event-spawned Champion mobs in the world’s many maps is because they provide almost no valuable loot, right? May want to consider that before you suggest removing ALL open-world content loot from EVERY area in the game.
You are basically suggesting the death of all open-world event running.
You’re being a bit dramatic. You describe a game where nobody is completing events, and yet thousands of events are completed across these servers every day, and the only reward for them is a little coin, a little XP, and a little karma. You do realize some people just.. like to play the game, right?
You have also apparently never been to Orr, where parts of the zone shut down based on the status of events. And yet the world keeps on spinning..!
You’re being a bit dramatic. You describe a game where nobody is completing events, and yet thousands of events are completed across these servers every day, and the only reward for them is a little coin, a little XP, and a little karma.
Yes, and there are also thousands of events that are completely ignored and left stuck in their existing status for days and days because people don’t want to run them, because they aren’t rewarding.
Your proposal wouldn’t make world bosses fun, they’d make them frustrating, and we’d end up with servers where world bosses stay up for days because no one wants to fight a creature that takes several minutes and drops nothing for your time or trouble.
You have also apparently never been to Orr, where parts of the zone shut down based on the status of events. And yet the world keeps on spinning..!
You’re the one who needs to visit Orr more often. On many servers, the temples remain locked for the majority of the game’s run time, until larger guilds come along to unlock the temples. I’ve done quick skims of Orr every time I’ve played and there is always at least two temples locked down on a regular basis, if not all of them. And my server isn’t a small server.
You’re being a bit dramatic. You describe a game where nobody is completing events, and yet thousands of events are completed across these servers every day, and the only reward for them is a little coin, a little XP, and a little karma.
Yes, and there are also thousands of events that are completely ignored and left stuck in their existing status for days and days because people don’t want to run them, because they aren’t rewarding.
Your proposal wouldn’t make world bosses fun, they’d make them frustrating, and we’d end up with servers where world bosses stay up for days because no one wants to fight a creature that takes several minutes and drops nothing for your time or trouble.
You have also apparently never been to Orr, where parts of the zone shut down based on the status of events. And yet the world keeps on spinning..!
You’re the one who needs to visit Orr more often. On many servers, the temples remain locked for the majority of the game’s run time, until larger guilds come along to unlock the temples. I’ve done quick skims of Orr every time I’ve played and there is always at least two temples locked down on a regular basis, if not all of them. And my server isn’t a small server.
lol i was thinking the same thing.
it’s a lot better now ppl get a proper reward.
but before this patch most of it was locked down most of the time.
You’re the one who needs to visit Orr more often. On many servers, the temples remain locked for the majority of the game’s run time, until larger guilds come along to unlock the temples. I’ve done quick skims of Orr every time I’ve played and there is always at least two temples locked down on a regular basis, if not all of them. And my server isn’t a small server.
NEVER had a problem with temples except in cases where an event in the chain breaks down, which happens more frequently than it should. Always seems to be people interested in the karma vendor or just happening by and jumping in.
The proposed replacement rewards are not rewarding enough. Unless a buff is “too good,” people hardly notice them. Also, open world PvE is easy enough that such a this-zone buff is going to be seen as not worth the effort. Locking map areas away behind an event is an interesting mechanic, but the current manifestations of this are complained about (CoF and Arah, for instance). Adding more such will not go over well and will be perceived as a punishment for not doing the event rather than a reward for doing it.
My suggestions for rewards that might inspire players to participate in these events “for the right reasons” are just examples, and I’m sure any designer worth his or her salt could come up with many better ones.
That said, if these “lures” only attract 10-15 players to these events.. mission accomplished. I’m not looking to create a situation where players are coming from all over the world to participate in one of these events. That’s the problem we have now. And I’ll take quality over quantity every time. It’s not difficult to get roughly a half-dozen to a dozen players who happen to be in the zone to participate in an event.. I see this at practically any basic event already, and none of them offer boss chests as a reward. At any given time there’s probably around 5 players just adventuring in the area a boss event happens to spawn who are likely to jump in.
You know, a few months back I saw that Tequatl and Jormag were in their spawn window at the same time. I knew most people would go to Jormag, so I went to Tequatl. I was standing there on the beach looking at maybe 6 other players waiting for his spawn and, for the first time, I got nervous and excited about this fight. I was thinking “this is going to be fantastic.. finally a real fight with Tequatl”. I changed my traits and skills to be more group oriented and supportive, I started reviewing the abilities on the turrets.. this was going to be awesome!
Then Jormag ended and several dozen people from that event showed up on the beach before Tequatl had a chance to spawn. I sighed and switched back to my DPS loadout, waited for him to spawn, chose him as my target and hit my “1” key and sat back waiting to collect my treasure.
I don’t want 20, 30, 50, 100 people at these events. Especially when they’re showing up not to have fun and be challenged, but because of the all mighty loot carrot. There is enough content in this game to occupy people without sacrificing these boss events.
I understand your desire. However, I believe ANet did envision these events as something to entice players from all over the “world.” That vision shows in the title World Boss, versus the temples being “Meta-Events.”
As to rewards… while I’m sure creative people could come up with better, I’m not sure that the players would stand for a change at this point. Maybe if the rewards were new and extremely desirable. However, for many people that is going to translate to stuff, which means drop which means chest.
It might be more productive to ask for more limitations on chest use, though that also is not going to be popular.
You’re the one who needs to visit Orr more often. On many servers, the temples remain locked for the majority of the game’s run time, until larger guilds come along to unlock the temples. I’ve done quick skims of Orr every time I’ve played and there is always at least two temples locked down on a regular basis, if not all of them. And my server isn’t a small server.
NEVER had a problem with temples except in cases where an event in the chain breaks down, which happens more frequently than it should. Always seems to be people interested in the karma vendor or just happening by and jumping in.
This may be server-related. The fact that these events produce chests has brought more people to Orr, but even so, there are plenty of times on HoD when all 5 are locked up and no one is doing them. State of the server on the temples is that it is extremely rare to see more than 1-2 uncontested during peak play times in the U.S. and all 5 locked up the remainder of the time.
I agree with the general sentiment OP, but I probably would have stated it as “things that aren’t challenging shouldn’t give great loot, outdoor boss events currently are not challenging, especially when more players show up than the encounter was designed for”.
Giving loot from challenging outdoor boss events is all well and good, the problem is that these events right now are really non-events and require nothing more than the ability to fog a mirror.
I agree with the general sentiment OP, but I probably would have stated it as “things that aren’t challenging shouldn’t give great loot, outdoor boss events currently are not challenging, especially when more players show up than the encounter was designed for”.
Giving loot from challenging outdoor boss events is all well and good, the problem is that these events right now are really non-events and require nothing more than the ability to fog a mirror.
This is the problem, not the loot. The Kriat event by teq is currently harder then a boss fight. Such a joke.
Getting rid of loot for boss events would be incredibly stupid and most people would agree with that. Either they changed something with their servers to cause this lag, or its due to guaranteeing a rare item for each fight, that has caused it.
If they got rid of good rewards for events, I would never do them again, and probably would stop playing totally. There are always new games coming out.
OP
I have to just say.
What in the heck are you talking about?
1) this entire game is centered around open world events and bosses and is the core of the game per Anet themselves.
2) the chest for bosses only work once per character per day. So how can you farm it with one character?
3) In the last couple of months the loot table is actually better then it was at the end of the year.
Simply Anet has made it clear that they want more Open World bosses to be fought and in the way that was intended from the beginning. They are now getting closer to this goal. Not there yet by my standards since I still do not see people trying to form DE raid groups. When I see this taking place I will feel they have gotten to their goal.
When I saw the Dragon boss fights I couldn’t wait to participate in them because they looked so awesome and fun to fight. Then when I got to fight one it was incredibly…….boring and unsatisfying, especially considering the VERY VERY VERY crap loot you’d get after it.
I’m glad you actually get something for sitting through a boss fight that the only strategy you need to use is mash skill 1 in the right spot.
I agree with the general sentiment OP, but I probably would have stated it as “things that aren’t challenging shouldn’t give great loot, outdoor boss events currently are not challenging, especially when more players show up than the encounter was designed for”.
Giving loot from challenging outdoor boss events is all well and good, the problem is that these events right now are really non-events and require nothing more than the ability to fog a mirror.
This is the problem, not the loot. The Kriat event by teq is currently harder then a boss fight. Such a joke.
I doubt it would matter. The developers have already said they plan to work on these boss encounters this year to make them more engaging. We all know they scale poorly and most of them are pushovers when enough players are thrown at them. Even if/when they fix that, what they’re unlikely to ever anytime soon is the performance issues that occur when 50 or 100 players swarm a single event.
Right now we have an overabundance of participants because they all want loot, to the point where people are complaining about performance, lag, overflow, etc. What happens if/when the fights are made entertaining on top of that? The attendance isn’t going to drop, if anything it will go up and these problems get worse.
Well, I want loot as much as the next person. I also want these fights to not be so lame. And something has to give, because apparently we can’t have both. And I will choose cool boss encounters that don’t provide much in the way of digital rewards over, over lame boss encounters that are loot pinatas.
Sure, in a perfect world we’d have cool boss encounters that provide equally cool loot, and these servers could handle countless players converging on the same spot without rolling over and dying.. but that is not happening. It’s not working now, and it’s not going to work later. The current setup breaks too many of the game’s core philosophies. Were competing for resources, we’re just “swinging our sword again and again” through these encounters, and there is no appreciation for the event or the adventure anymore. People are just cycling through alts, events, and servers to tag as many of these bosses (for the loot) as possible. These bosses might as well spawn looking like a giant immobile treasure box that explodes into presents when you beat on it enough times.. we probably wouldn’t even notice the change.
Getting rid of loot for boss events would be incredibly stupid and most people would agree with that. Either they changed something with their servers to cause this lag, or its due to guaranteeing a rare item for each fight, that has caused it.
If they got rid of good rewards for events, I would never do them again, and probably would stop playing totally. There are always new games coming out.
While I don’t agree that it would be stupid, I do agree that most people wouldn’t agree with this change. I believe I said that straight off at the start. At the same time, I also believe too many players have become focused on the loot. Too many players want rares and exotics to rain from the sky and don’t want to expend any effort for their rewards. With the current setup, these boss events are ridiculously easy, and yet people will actually argue that they deserve better rewards from them than we’re currently getting.
There is certainly no shortage of bad judgement out there.
When I saw the Dragon boss fights I couldn’t wait to participate in them because they looked so awesome and fun to fight. Then when I got to fight one it was incredibly…….boring and unsatisfying, especially considering the VERY VERY VERY crap loot you’d get after it.
I’m glad you actually get something for sitting through a boss fight that the only strategy you need to use is mash skill 1 in the right spot.
They are boring, and a lot of the reason is because too many players are attending them. There are actually mechanics to these fights that go ignored and unused because in most cases the zerg can just overwhelm the event with minimal effort.
It’s one of the reasons I wish these events were less popular. And since it’s the loot that is making them too popular.. that’s why I suggest it needs to go. You would find these fights a lot more interesting if only 10-15 people were participating in them. Maybe to the point where you were more excited about the encounter, and less dependent on the loot as a consolation prize.
This thread seems to go along the same lines as some thoughts I posted under Dynamic Events:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/events/Game-design-philosophy/first#post1600139
The subject is contested towns/keeps, not dragons, but the idea is the same – Basically, there is no satisfaction from doing events. Success is either impossible, or trivial, and short-lived either way, with no discernable benefit or detriment for success/failure.
As for “inconveniencing everyone else”, this isn’t so much about forcing people to do events, but to have events be content actually worth doing because there’s a sense of gravity and importance to them. As opposed to how the game currently is, which is treadmilling WvW or Fractals, since nothing else really matters. I mean, why have a ‘world’ at all if that’s the direction we want to go in?
Because the rest of the game drops nothing…
Nothing? Really? I find it difficult to believe that you have obtained none of your gear outside of open-world meta-event chests.
Before the last patch (Feb) that implemented this, i had not seen a rare in open world in weeks (maybe a month) and i’d had one exotic drop ever in open world…one…in 1700 hours plus, you can say i’m exaggerating but i know the truth of it..
Before this Feb patch i was close to leaving Guildwars 2 because of the terrible drop rates i received, if they had not of implemented this i’d have dumped this game by now..
All my Equipment was earned from Crafting, Token Dungeons and the Trading post. I never got nice loot from chests till this last (Feb) Patch..
(edited by Dante.1508)
Because the rest of the game drops nothing…
Nothing? Really? I find it difficult to believe that you have obtained none of your gear outside of open-world meta-event chests.
Before the last patch (Feb) that implemented this, i had not seen a rare in open world in weeks (maybe a month) and i’d had one exotic drop ever in open world…one…in 1700 hours plus, you can say i’m exaggerating but i know the truth of it..
Before this Feb patch i was close to leaving Guildwars 2 because of the terrible drop rates i received, if they had not of implemented this i’d have dumped this game by now..
All my Equipment was earned from Crafting, Token Dungeons and the Trading post. I never got nice loot from chests till this last (Feb) Patch..
I play maybe two hours an evening and usually get at least one rare in that time (assuming I’m actually out killing monsters). But random is random, so there’s that.
However, the fact that you would quit the game over drop rates really tells me you are probably not the kind of player that appreciates a good adventure. Loot is obviously important to you (so important to you that it has caused you to think about leaving the game), and so I doubt anything I say that doesn’t include the phrase “buff drop rate” is not likely to appeal to you. Not trying to be offensive.. that’s just how I see it.
(sigh) Unpopular post time.
During GW2’s development, I used to look at those Tequatl and Shatterer event videos and the furthest thing from my mind as I watched their footage was the question of how many times I could farm them a day for rare drops. And yet, now this seems to be the only question on the minds of most players.
I’m sure the community that just wants to be showered in rare and exotic drops will strongly disagree with this, but I really wish Arenanet would just completely remove chest rewards from these open-world boss events altogether. Instead, make the events do something that gives players in the area a reason to beat them, like locking down a portion of the map until they’re defeated, or awarding victors with a buff only applicable to that zone. And then players who are actually adventuring in these zones will have a reason to band together and beat these bosses, no loot-carrot-on-a-stick required.
I would love to see these world events entertaining only a fraction of the crowds they attract now (who are there for all the wrong reasons). I choose quality over quantity every time. This whole loot pinata thing is just ruining the entire sense of adventure this game was supposed to have. I’ll even suggest that it’s introducing elements that are counter to the philosophy of the game. Those bosses are like open-world resources, and we’re now practically competing over them as we fight to see who can out-camp whom, with the loser ending up cursing on an overflow map. And not because we care about the boss or the event, but because we want that loot drop.
Wasn’t this supposed to be the game that moved away from that kind of unpleasant competition?
I, on the other hand, think the rewards need to be increased even MORE. To balance it out, they can just have the “Dragons” spawn in random locations. Make us EARN the reward, by hunting them down. Except “Claw”, of course. He’s the only dragon that actually moves around a little, so he’s fine.
Fun and challenging game play would be immensely unpopular, gotcha.
Stop trying to score points. Again. I don’t care, and nobody is keeping score.
Fun and challenging play for one person is frustrating for another. Several people I know adore Nethack, while I have a cautious respect for the technical achievement it represents. I don’t like it as a game however, because it is punishing and brutal.
Other people find other games fun and/or challenging but I don’t want that gameplay brought into Guild Wars 2 because it would simply not work as well. And it would annoy the living crap out of them.
I’ll lay my card on the table here. The best form of boss battles I’ve experienced which tread that line between difficult to the unskilled and fun for the skilled lies in the Monster Hunter franchise. Say what you will about the RNG and grind of that game (I’ll probably agree) but the battles were more often than not superbly done.
I personally would enjoy fighting the a Claw of Jormag not unlike wrangling Kushala Daora, of a Shatterer like Fatalis, Or smaller dragon champions like a Rathalos. Or in the Crystal Desert having something like Diablos to fight in a Dynamic Event. There are two problems with these fights though.
1 – They require a lot of positioning, dodging, blocking, and can be very much a war of attrition. Especially since your recovery inventory is limited. In Guild Wars 2, it’s not limited and nor can you limit it to only four people . . . unless it was a dungeon instance or Fractal. So it wouldn’t balance out at all well.
2 – When you get skilled enough it still becomes routine. There are people who never manage to beat some of the monsters, but Nargacuga? One of the more notorious “wake up calls”? I used to shred him for the lulz, and it was easy when you knew what to do. Same trouble in Guild Wars 2. When the enemy has been understood the challenge drops sharply.
It seems like a large part of the point being made is that folks are doing the meta events, including the dragons, to farm them and not to enjoy them.
edit: Also the whole idea of folks just being logged in and not helping with pre-events or camping out a zone is an issue. I don’t really address that with this post, but despite doing that at times myself I do definitely agree that’s ..not really "playing" and further evidence that MMOs are all about how to grind for stuff. I’d never just stand around for anything in GW1, but again, don’t want to derail comparing to a different-style game too much.
Exotic armor and weapon skins from dungeons are only available by running the explorable version of dungeons multiple times for even one piece, let alone a whole set. After the first run, is a player really doing this for fun? Isn’t this also a loot-oriented grind?
That’s more or less the bread and butter of most MMO games -- providing the carrot on the stick to keep players running forward. Well, OK, we really didn’t have it much in GW1, but that’s probably a whole separate discussion. The point is that I think maybe there’s a matter of perspective here: rather than spin it as people who want loot potentially ruining fun events, why not see if we can think of ways (or, ideally, the developers do) to keep making the pursuit of loot more fun and engaging?
World events in a non-instanced game world are going to attract tons of people. But catering to the community at large also means providing a reward for the participation. Look at the giant in Nageling -- he has tons of health and takes a while to whittle down, even with a decent number of folks, while offering nothing more than typical event completion. Hang out in Diessa and count how many times someone notes the giant is up and folks respond with "not worth the effort" and the like. Because it’s not -- the event offers nothing more than other events in the area provide for a reward but takes much longer to complete. (edit: compare to, say, Kol in Harathi -- that is part of a larger chain, and at least you can flow into other events as a result [plus the centuar boss provides a chest] and start a karma train for a bit if you so desire) Removing the loot from the meta events will have the same effect. I won’t ever deny that players will still come and complete them, as they can be fun and are neat, but overall I suspect that wouldn’t be a wise choice for retaining players.
And the fact that the chests were changed to guarantee a means to generate ecto for everyone suggests that the aim is to keep players in the game world doing these events.
So if we assume the loot motivator remains, what can be done to make these more than a giant cluster of auto-attacking? From my perspective, it seems that the large boss fights are where the non-trinity idea has kittens in its armor (edit: Really? That’s a common phrase, word-filter. I am not trying to use a racial slur here. Holy crap.). Fantasticly fun combat, in my opinion, with trash mobs and enemies overall, but once a giant health pool and a pattern of a few attacks come into play it’s kind of eehhh.
I think I am flowing off-topic, though. It’s late, I should stop writing this post.
(edited by synk.6907)
Exotic armor and weapon skins from dungeons are only available by running the explorable version of dungeons multiple times for even one piece, let alone a whole set. After the first run, is a player really doing this for fun? Isn’t this also a loot-oriented grind?
The difference with dungeons (beyond just the fact that there is a real danger to the characters, and players are having to work for their reward) is that no group’s dungeon is impacting the enjoyment of any other group’s dungeon. Everyone is separated into 5-man teams and playing independent of one another, which is not the same as an outdoor boss event where 30-50 or more players are converging on a single encounter and basically ruining the event for anyone who is not there mainly for the loot.
I said it before, but I’ll say it again: while the developers do plan to overhaul these events in an attempt to make them more fun, no change to the event itself is going to remove the frustrating performance issues players experience when an enormous amount of them converge on an area.
These are core technology problems that aren’t going away anytime soon. It’s not just a problem with “old events” that will be fixed when these events are reworked. We can assume at this point they have these problems in mind. And yet, take a look at the recent introduction of “The Gathering Storm” events. Raise your hand if you were one of the players out there on one of the days immediately following its launch, camped with dozens of other players out at the locations where Dredge/Flame Legion portals spawn, competing with everyone to tag mobs and finish off the related achievement while struggling with issues like lag and the sheer amount of firepower being thrown around.
These events are simply not fun when they’re overloaded with players, and they will always continue to be overloaded with players if anything beyond the smallest incentives are put into place. Dungeons don’t have this problem because of the restrictions on the number of players allowed into the instance. Open world bosses do.
(cont)
(cont)
World events in a non-instanced game world are going to attract tons of people. But catering to the community at large also means providing a reward for the participation. Look at the giant in Nageling — he has tons of health and takes a while to whittle down, even with a decent number of folks, while offering nothing more than typical event completion. Hang out in Diessa and count how many times someone notes the giant is up and folks respond with “not worth the effort” and the like. Because it’s not — the event offers nothing more than other events in the area provide for a reward but takes much longer to complete.
And yet, the Nageling is not always under the giant’s control. That’s because people do “bother” to defeat him. These people that think it’s “not worth the effort”.. that’s fine, because there are obviously enough other people who think it is since the event continues to be resolved even to this day.
And the same applies to these boss events. Contrary to popular thinking, these bosses do not require 50 players to defeat them. They can be beaten with a much smaller group, and that is all they ever need to attract. Even if the rewards were just a little extra karma, coin, and experience.. enough people in the area would take these events on (particularly if they were fun). And forget the upcoming redesign of these events.. the removal of the zerg alone is going to increase the challenge and the fun of these encounters. Even better, nobody is going to stand around for 30-60 minutes camping these events for a little extra karma/coin/xp because in the process of sitting around like a stump they’d be allowing other karma/coin/xp opportunities in the zone to go to waste.
I think one of the big disconnects with some of the people in this thread is that they’re convinced these events can’t be resolved without them or others of similar mind (either that, or they’re just nervous ArenaNet will test that theory), and that without the incentive of loot they’ll refuse to participate in that event. And I’m not saying “oh no!”, I’m saying “that’s fine”. Because life will go on without them, and these events will continue to be beaten whether those particular players choose to participate or not. Sure, the events may take a little longer to complete.. heaven forbid something like the Shadow Behemoth chain stretch out for 20-30 minutes (providing entertainment for the players involved the entire time) rather than being over in just 2 minutes after waiting two hours for it to spawn.
And the people who were just showing up for the loot, the ones who choose to no longer participate.. they’ll have to find another way to get their stuff. Maybe they’ll actually start spreading out around the world like ArenaNet wants instead of converging on specific points and going AFK. Some will threaten to just not play the game. And that’s ok too, those are just threats. Maybe some are even real, but I’m convinced that players can only maintain this stupid cycle of camping boss events for extended periods (to avoid overflow), and cycling through alts, etc, to squeeze in as many boss events as possible for only so long before it burns them out on the game completely anyway. What we have now is not only not fun, it’s not good for the health of the game long term.
No, you don’t find it fun. There are people out there who find it fun to play an event primarily for its rewards.
What you are proposing is nothing less than the death of most open-world events, because instead of rewarding players for trying to run content (as any good game does), you are punishing them for not doing it. That doesn’t encourage people to play, it encourages them to find a new game.
And while you may be thinking “fine, screw those people”, I imagine that “those people” significantly outnumber you. If we’re aiming to please the players as a majority, that means you lose that debate regardless. Maybe you are the one who needs to find another game, not everybody else.
Easy solution:
World bosses spawn at the same times across ALL servers, including overflows.
Problem solved, now no one misses out due to overflows, everyone gets boss, yadda yadda yadda. And before someone misunderstands and says “What about EU players or players in different time zones?” Bosses spawn ever X hours or so, so regardless of your time zone you will still have an opportunity.
So many stupid things in this game have such simple solutions…
Easy solution:
World bosses spawn at the same times across ALL servers, including overflows.
Problem solved, now no one misses out due to overflows, everyone gets boss, yadda yadda yadda. And before someone misunderstands and says “What about EU players or players in different time zones?” Bosses spawn ever X hours or so, so regardless of your time zone you will still have an opportunity.
So many stupid things in this game have such simple solutions…
Such a system would not work within the living breathing world of Tyria due to dynamic event chains.
Any event in a chain can take a different amount of time due to the skill and participation of players. Events can fail, causing other event chains to start which must be completed before the event cycles in again.
It sounds like you want instanced content, not a dynamic world.
Easy solution:
World bosses spawn at the same times across ALL servers, including overflows.
Problem solved, now no one misses out due to overflows, everyone gets boss, yadda yadda yadda. And before someone misunderstands and says “What about EU players or players in different time zones?” Bosses spawn ever X hours or so, so regardless of your time zone you will still have an opportunity.
So many stupid things in this game have such simple solutions…
Such a system would not work within the living breathing world of Tyria due to dynamic event chains.
Any event in a chain can take a different amount of time due to the skill and participation of players. Events can fail, causing other event chains to start which must be completed before the event cycles in again.
It sounds like you want instanced content, not a dynamic world.
Not even. Sure, it can take different times to complete, whatever. All I’m saying is to have the kickoff chains automatically trigger at set times, as they already do (though not currently all at the SAME set time). People will figure out the times as they already have, and show up at those times to complete the events; the only difference being that those screwed into an overflow have the same event chain kicking off at the same time.
Easy solution:
World bosses spawn at the same times across ALL servers, including overflows.
Problem solved, now no one misses out due to overflows, everyone gets boss, yadda yadda yadda. And before someone misunderstands and says “What about EU players or players in different time zones?” Bosses spawn ever X hours or so, so regardless of your time zone you will still have an opportunity.
So many stupid things in this game have such simple solutions…
Such a system would not work within the living breathing world of Tyria due to dynamic event chains.
Any event in a chain can take a different amount of time due to the skill and participation of players. Events can fail, causing other event chains to start which must be completed before the event cycles in again.
It sounds like you want instanced content, not a dynamic world.
Not even. Sure, it can take different times to complete, whatever. All I’m saying is to have the kickoff chains automatically trigger at set times, as they already do (though not currently all at the SAME set time). People will figure out the times as they already have, and show up at those times to complete the events; the only difference being that those screwed into an overflow have the same event chain kicking off at the same time.
Some of the events have a complicated web of events that lead to the meta event which rewards the increased loot chest. Look at the Balthazar chain for instance. It’s impossible to put it on a global timer since there are so many links in the chain that can fail or take a different amount of time to complete.
There’s something like 20 meta events (that I know of) that reward the big chests, people just need to spread out more and do those events.
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