Guild Wars 2

Ignavia.7420:

I tried to convince people, that zerging is counter-productive when it comes to saving citizens, but most just cared for simple loot. Unfortunately I did not have any arguments against that, because encouraging citizens does not give you rewards right away (neither loot nor experience). Kind of proves once again that most people are selfish.

You say that like it is a bad thing. It’s not. It’s natural. Greed is a natural emotion. Get over it. If you can’t get past this, that is your personal problem and no one elses.

I paid for this game same as many. I’m playing how I want. Don’t like it? Tough poo. If I just want to tag and not save citizens, that’s my prime directive and if you don’t like it, well, sucks to be you. Nothing to stop you from trying to save as many as you want. I’m certainly not trying to convince you that you need to stop trying to save citizens and just tag so why are you trying to stop me from what I want to do? That ain’t right, son. I honestly don’t care how many citizens are saved because the loots for that aren’t worth the effort… And I really really wish they would have been more Jubilee or Scarlet pre-champ nerf Invasion type zerging instead of this watered down version. The loots just aren’t as good… but still better than wasting time trying to save citizens.

thefantasticg.3984:

Why should I take the time to do something else that has less reward?

This.
Sad but true.

Give a direct incentive to rescue citizens. Not an indirect invisible one that people don’t know or don’t care about.
The same problem existed in the invasions.

I think it’s apparent that Anet has made serious attempts to design this event to promote non-zerg play.

- The achievements encourage varied, non-zerg play. Triple Play and Group Effort are awarded only if the entire zone is played with strategy. Each area needs groups of people defending escorts and accomplishing events.
- As the map as a whole succeeds, the higher the number of evacuees, and the higher the rewards.

It’s individual selfish play that hampers the event, not the design of the event. Anet learned from the Scarlet Invasions from zergs just farming til failure. In Escape from LA, farming til fail is less rewarding than smart zone-wide play and citizen saving.

Seras.5702:

In Escape from LA, farming til fail is less rewarding than smart zone-wide play and citizen saving.

No. It isn’t. That’s why we’re still zerging. If it was more rewarding to smart-zone wide play than zerging, then guess what, that’s what everybody would be doing. Like I’ve said from personal experience it just ain’t worth it not to zerg. Until that changes, then don’t expect us not to zerg.

I like the update. Though my time is getting short so… I’ll just blast out my thoughts. The problems lie in a lack of explanation from Anet and the achievements are opposing the theme of saving people.

Large events need parameters to be given out. How is anyone going to organize 150 players to experiment on each event to see how they scale???? That’s just unreasonable to completely unrealistic. Especially when we’re tossed about is so many different overflows. Anet should give us some parameters to work with. The Wurm event should have taught the developers that. Heck, we still require 3rd party services to even do content like that.

The achievements are all based on the events, none of which are saving civilians. The two “succeed in every event” just promotes players to go afk and stand for the 45 minutes. Since there isn’t a clear indication of when those events will pop. Also, the events are short lived and most of the way points aren’t functioning. So it’s easy to be too far away to get there in time to complete the event.

If people were aware that it would be more profitable to save civilians, that’s what they would do. Also, as was posted above, it’s questionable if it even is. Running solo isn’t that easy either. That 3 man patrol can easily down you. Especially when they have the trolly laser helping them.

Anyway, like the update and would like it even more if we hit 1500.

Seras.5702:

I think it’s apparent that Anet has made serious attempts to design this event to promote non-zerg play.

- The achievements encourage varied, non-zerg play. Triple Play and Group Effort are awarded only if the entire zone is played with strategy. Each area needs groups of people defending escorts and accomplishing events.
- As the map as a whole succeeds, the higher the number of evacuees, and the higher the rewards.

It’s individual selfish play that hampers the event, not the design of the event. Anet learned from the Scarlet Invasions from zergs just farming til failure. In Escape from LA, farming til fail is less rewarding than smart zone-wide play and citizen saving.

They have made an attempt, sure.
But that doesn’t change the fact that there is no direct encouragement for helping citizens. All you see is a number rise, you don’t get anything direct from it.

When you zerg, you scale events up which means you get more loot bags from the mobs. With these you can buy obsi shards, levels, and “rare” crafting ingredients and stuff.
You also get blades, which are shiny and you get chances for semi-expensive quaggan tonics and other random loot.

It’s quite obvious that people would choose to zerg instead of helping citizen.

And see, I didn’t even know that was the objective. I thought the objective was to complete the events successfully.

I’ve “saved” some citizens. But some I talk to just get angry. It’s a bit confusing.

the easiest way to fix this would be, the more players that join will scale up the event’s dificulty and scale down the rewards.

this only for events that intend to discourage zerg combat

I found this nice informative picture on the Wiki

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lion%27s_Arch_

here’s a link straight to the picture showing you exactly where and what direction you need to go to save the citizens.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Civilian_Evacuation_Location_Map.png

and I have to add that it is the fault of the server that people aren’t achieving the top reward. ANET built it just fine, it’s the players that need to cooperate and focus on the goal.

this is true for almost everything outside of PvE, so once all of us on a server can stop being selfish then maybe we can actually enjoy being pro’s at LS content.

I feel bad for the Developers that put all this work into making this and now they have to watch it turn into a loot-fest.

It is their fault. There is no encouragement for saving citizens. There is plenty of encouragement to do events. If I see 30 people camping the lighthouse for the entirety of a 45 minute run so they can retry the escort event that starts there again and again, that’s the developer’s fault, because they encouraged people to do that.

Maybe once people get their achievements it will be less “EVERYONE ESCORT LAWSON” and more let’s see how many people we can save!

When I zerg with the commanders I get close to 200 bags. When I roam around rezzing citizens I get maybe 20 bags. And since the majority is zerging, we only get about ~600 citizens saved total. Tell me, what’s the incentive to go saving citizens since the majority won’t do it?

So the bags we get at 100, 300, 600, etc citizens saved don’t exist? Or the reward bags we get at the end depending on how we do?

Nope, gotta zerg for 200 bags of blade bits, quaggan tonics, and the rare blue or green!

Ironically, the threshold bags contain blade bits and an exotic box too, if I recall correctly. But yeah, it’s not much compared to how much more supply bags you get by zerging. Give rewards for saving a citizen that outweigh zerging and that’s what people will do. Path of least resistance and all that.

Uruz Six.6594:

So the bags we get at 100, 300, 600, etc citizens saved don’t exist? Or the reward bags we get at the end depending on how we do?

Nope, gotta zerg for 200 bags of blade bits, quaggan tonics, and the rare blue or green!

Yup… Not to mention the luck you get from the bags… and dragonite and e. fragments and other loots. And the slaying potions… and … Well, you get the point.

I’m noticing threshold bags also award quite a few found heirooms. I have 75 already, I’ve been largely ignoring rubble and I’ve done 2 1500 saved runs already (it’s honestly not that difficult once you have everyone cooperating).

Zepher.7803:

I feel bad for the Developers that put all this work into making this and now they have to watch it turn into a loot-fest.

U shouldn’t. (no filter.kitten.) Its a mistake they keep repeating. They always reward zerg play more, than team play. Hope, someday they will learn and balance rewards for all tasks. Why the ones, who do nothing, get same reward as the ones, who do everything? Why I can keep standing afk on wp and still get rewards for all your work? That makes no sense.

thefantasticg.3984:

Uruz Six.6594:

So the bags we get at 100, 300, 600, etc citizens saved don’t exist? Or the reward bags we get at the end depending on how we do?

Nope, gotta zerg for 200 bags of blade bits, quaggan tonics, and the rare blue or green!

Yup… Not to mention the luck you get from the bags… and dragonite and e. fragments and other loots. And the slaying potions… and … Well, you get the point.

Not to mention that players can get 2-3 citizen rescue bags in addition to the 200 blue bags without rescuing any citizens.

Edit: And additional drops from mobs and the chests from bosses.

I agree completely. I think this update has much more potential for fun than it is realizing due to this very reason. A few simple solutions. Make reviving citizens an achievement to hit and give some loot bags when you revive them (or give something else unique).

In essence make reviving citizens just as profitable as following the zerg. As it is, yeah there is a chance for big rewards if 1500 citizens are saved, but there is a problem with that. 1) Not everybody knows about the reward, 2) the reward is based on the dreaded RNG for a one shot per event prize, and 3) if you try to save citizens you loose out on the definite loot the zerg would provide and still have a good chance to not get any loot at the end if it fails because so many people follow the zerg.

In the end, people often choose the sure bet loot rather than the chance at a RNG that may treat you well.

guardian.6489:

I’m noticing threshold bags also award quite a few found heirooms. I have 75 already, I’ve been largely ignoring rubble and I’ve done 2 1500 saved runs already (it’s honestly not that difficult once you have everyone cooperating).

Tell me what server actually tries this so I can guest there.

And what rewards come from 1500 bags?

I think this update has much more potential for fun than it is realizing due to this very reason. A few simple solutions. Make reviving citizens an achievement to hit and give some loot bags when you revive them (or give something else unique).

In essence make reviving citizens just as profitable as following the zerg. As it is, yeah there is a chance for big rewards if 1500 citizens are saved, but there is a problem with that. 1) Not everybody knows about the reward, 2) the reward is based on the dreaded RNG for a one shot per event prize, and 3) if you try to save citizens you loose out on the definite loot the zerg would provide and still have a good chance to not get any loot at the end if it fails because so many people follow the zerg.

In the end, people often choose the sure bet loot rather than the chance at a RNG that may treat you well.

Traveller.7496:

When I zerg with the commanders I get close to 200 bags. When I roam around rezzing citizens I get maybe 20 bags. And since the majority is zerging, we only get about ~600 citizens saved total. Tell me, what’s the incentive to go saving citizens since the majority won’t do it?

You get 200 bags of what….a belonging and a blade fragment?

The end bag for saving 1500 citizens has a chance for anything from a previous living story including (but not limited to) fused weapon tickets, the Monocle, Celestial Recipes… and from what I hear there’s a chance you’ll get a precursor too (but I’m guessing precursor chance is about the same as anything else).

My goal is to save the citizens. The best a map has done with me in it is about 950, I want to help save everyone. And if you can stave off the miasma events (all of them) you get a bonus reward.

There needs to be a group at each of the major sections of the map and every event needs to be successful.

From the Patch Notes (that people really should read):
Coordinate to stop three miasma deployments simultaneously to earn the Triple Threat achievement, which awards 10 Spinal Shards and bonus loot.

Rescue enough citizens and work together with the entire map to earn five tiers of rewards. > Tiers are set at 100, 300, 600, 1000, and 1500 citizens rescued.

• As players surpass each tier, contributors are rewarded Spinal Shards, Refugee’s Belongings, and Found Heirlooms.
  > For players who attain the highest tier, there’s a chance for ascended materials and rewards from previous Living World releases.

• Stopping the miasma deployment by defeating the enemy troops will allow players to rescue five nearby survivors.
  > As a further bonus, if all three miasma deployments are simultaneously prevented within ten minutes, an additional 35 citizens will be saved.

• Defeating each boss event (Aether Elites, Molten Champ, Wurm Queen) will save 10 additional citizens.
• Some groups in Lion’s Arch (Children, Moas, Lighthouse, Marriner, Orgres, Dolyaks) require an armed escort in order to successfully escape. Assist them by clearing their escape route and increase the rescue tally by five.

Need 3 groups (zergs) total….and people shouldn’t have to waypoint around the map. Each group does the events in their respective areas and in between events they save citizens and clear mobs to get them out safely.

Small rescue teams wander the zone looking for survivors in out of the way places and usher them to whisper agents or the exit.

Another point is how ANet puts in rewards that are counter to the goal of the Living Story patch. In this case, the incentive to farm rubble if you want to buy a potion that gives you a halo or horns (selfless and thoughtless potions). Just one potion requires 250 heirlooms. If you get the 40 per day that’s 6 full invasions and if you don’t get the full 40 a day then it’s more. So that means people who want these are spending invasions running from one rubble pile to another, ignoring the citizens because that will only slow you down and it’s not what you are personally there for. Once people get all their achieves and start looking for the next goal there are likely to be a number of people farming rubble piles.

khani.4786:

Traveller.7496:

When I zerg with the commanders I get close to 200 bags. When I roam around rezzing citizens I get maybe 20 bags. And since the majority is zerging, we only get about ~600 citizens saved total. Tell me, what’s the incentive to go saving citizens since the majority won’t do it?

You get 200 bags of what….a belonging and a blade fragment?

The end bag for saving 1500 citizens has a chance for anything from a previous living story including (but not limited to) fused weapon tickets, the Monocle, Celestial Recipes… and from what I hear there’s a chance you’ll get a precursor too (but I’m guessing precursor chance is about the same as anything else).

My goal is to save the citizens. The best a map has done with me in it is about 950, I want to help save everyone. And if you can stave off the miasma events (all of them) you get a bonus reward.

There needs to be a group at each of the major sections of the map and every event needs to be successful.

From the Patch Notes (that people really should read):
Coordinate to stop three miasma deployments simultaneously to earn the Triple Threat achievement, which awards 10 Spinal Shards and bonus loot.

Rescue enough citizens and work together with the entire map to earn five tiers of rewards. > Tiers are set at 100, 300, 600, 1000, and 1500 citizens rescued.

• As players surpass each tier, contributors are rewarded Spinal Shards, Refugee’s Belongings, and Found Heirlooms.
  > For players who attain the highest tier, there’s a chance for ascended materials and rewards from previous Living World releases.

• Stopping the miasma deployment by defeating the enemy troops will allow players to rescue five nearby survivors.
  > As a further bonus, if all three miasma deployments are simultaneously prevented within ten minutes, an additional 35 citizens will be saved.

• Defeating each boss event (Aether Elites, Molten Champ, Wurm Queen) will save 10 additional citizens.
• Some groups in Lion’s Arch (Children, Moas, Lighthouse, Marriner, Orgres, Dolyaks) require an armed escort in order to successfully escape. Assist them by clearing their escape route and increase the rescue tally by five.

Need 3 groups (zergs) total….and people shouldn’t have to waypoint around the map. Each group does the events in their respective areas and in between events they save citizens and clear mobs to get them out safely.

Small rescue teams wander the zone looking for survivors in out of the way places and usher them to whisper agents or the exit.

1) Most people don’t know about the citizen rescue rewards.

2) Doing events does not only reward you with bags, it also gives you money, experience, karma, standard loot from mobs and chests from boss events.

3) You do not have to rescue citizens yourself to get the citizen rescue rewards.

4) Achievements require completing events instead of rescuing citizens.

5) Thoughtful and Thoughtless potions require a lot of heirlooms and thus many people are looking for rubble.

6) Keeping all of the above in mind many people who know about the rescue rewards come to the conclusion that rescuing citizens is a fruitless endeavor because no reasonable threshold of rescued people will be reached. So they decide to not bother.

Simple answer – Add a citizens rescued achievement. 1 point towards the achievement for every citizen ‘encouraged’ or ressed – multiple tiers up to 500 points top tier.

khani.4786:

Traveller.7496:

When I zerg with the commanders I get close to 200 bags. When I roam around rezzing citizens I get maybe 20 bags. And since the majority is zerging, we only get about ~600 citizens saved total. Tell me, what’s the incentive to go saving citizens since the majority won’t do it?

You get 200 bags of what….a belonging and a blade fragment?

The end bag for saving 1500 citizens has a chance for anything from a previous living story including (but not limited to) fused weapon tickets, the Monocle, Celestial Recipes… and from what I hear there’s a chance you’ll get a precursor too (but I’m guessing precursor chance is about the same as anything else).

My goal is to save the citizens. The best a map has done with me in it is about 950, I want to help save everyone. And if you can stave off the miasma events (all of them) you get a bonus reward.

There needs to be a group at each of the major sections of the map and every event needs to be successful.

From the Patch Notes (that people really should read):
Coordinate to stop three miasma deployments simultaneously to earn the Triple Threat achievement, which awards 10 Spinal Shards and bonus loot.

Rescue enough citizens and work together with the entire map to earn five tiers of rewards. > Tiers are set at 100, 300, 600, 1000, and 1500 citizens rescued.

• As players surpass each tier, contributors are rewarded Spinal Shards, Refugee’s Belongings, and Found Heirlooms.
  > For players who attain the highest tier, there’s a chance for ascended materials and rewards from previous Living World releases.

• Stopping the miasma deployment by defeating the enemy troops will allow players to rescue five nearby survivors.
  > As a further bonus, if all three miasma deployments are simultaneously prevented within ten minutes, an additional 35 citizens will be saved.

• Defeating each boss event (Aether Elites, Molten Champ, Wurm Queen) will save 10 additional citizens.
• Some groups in Lion’s Arch (Children, Moas, Lighthouse, Marriner, Orgres, Dolyaks) require an armed escort in order to successfully escape. Assist them by clearing their escape route and increase the rescue tally by five.

Need 3 groups (zergs) total….and people shouldn’t have to waypoint around the map. Each group does the events in their respective areas and in between events they save citizens and clear mobs to get them out safely.

Small rescue teams wander the zone looking for survivors in out of the way places and usher them to whisper agents or the exit.

I might post a guide later but if you want to beat the event, you need at least one party at every cluster of citizens you can see in this map: http://i.imgur.com/ASh3J9V.png

That means one at Hooligans, White crane (right of it), Western Ward, Eastern Ward, Postern Warden, Trader’s Forum, Farshore ward, Fort Mariner (the ones to the left), Bloodcoast ward and you’ll need a few to float between these.

In general you’ll need one party per event meaning someone should call it in map chat. You only need one party per miasma event, any more and the event will upscale and get harders. Escort events don’t need more people but they don’t scale as brutally so don’t get mad at the pugs crowding around saving the children.

There should be no commander tags or zergs groups up, every player should be spread out as far as you possibly can. You want every citizen running to an order’s agent as soon as you can. Do that and you don’t even need to succeed every single event.

I’m in the “no idea what I’m supposed to do” camp as well. I logged in for the first time in the middle of a battle. It told me to rescue citizens so I looked for some sort of event marker or other indicator, scouted around my area, and neither produced any results. I did find an escort event after a while, and since events have always been – 100% of the time in the past – the indication of where the action is, I did the escort event and got some achievements. It took me quite a few trips in to LA to even SEE a citizen since wandering off on your own is dangerous and offers zero rewards and zero achievements.

Of course after reading the forums I now get the point, but this seems like a very unclear event. The game HIGHLY encourages you to not save citizens.

By the way, what is this great reward at 1500 citizens?

Ganathar.4956:

1) Most people don’t know about the citizen rescue rewards.

2) Doing events does not only reward you with bags, it also gives you money, experience, karma, standard loot from mobs and chests from boss events.

3) You do not have to rescue citizens yourself to get the citizen rescue rewards.

4) Achievements require completing events instead of rescuing citizens.

5) Thoughtful and Thoughtless potions require a lot of heirlooms and thus many people are looking for rubble.

6) Keeping all of the above in mind many people who know about the rescue rewards come to the conclusion that rescuing citizens is a fruitless endeavor because no reasonable threshold of rescued people will be reached. So they decide to not bother.

Awesome summary

Mikuchan.7261:

They have made an attempt, sure.
But that doesn’t change the fact that there is no direct encouragement for helping citizens. All you see is a number rise, you don’t get anything direct from it.

False. Each milestone of citizens saved gets you a bonus reward bag. The more citizens you save, the more reward bags you get. Also, you get a final reward at the end based on your citizens saved. Again, the more you save, the better the reward.

The fault isn’t with the event. The fault lies with the selfish & lazy zergers who want to autoattack en masse for blue bags rather than win the event. Effort is required to save 1500 instead of 600.

And as for people still zerging and not learning, I recently got my Triple Play achievement yesterday. That’s a zone-wide achievement and it means people are learning how to play properly rather than mindlessly zerging for loot. Anet doesn’t have to spell it out for us. We should have to learn the right mechanics & strategy to win.

Fluffball.8307:

By the way, what is this great reward at 1500 citizens?

Dragon coffers probably

Sergoros.4398:

Fluffball.8307:

By the way, what is this great reward at 1500 citizens?

Dragon coffers probably

I wish I was paying more attention to how many were saved in the run I did, but yes, I got Dragon Coffers at some point. Might have been only 800 or 1000 saved though.

Seras.5702:

And as for people still zerging and not learning, I recently got my Triple Play achievement yesterday. That’s a zone-wide achievement and it means people are learning how to play properly rather than mindlessly zerging for loot. Anet doesn’t have to spell it out for us. We should have to learn the right mechanics & strategy to win.

As we found out with the Scarlet Invasions it is EQUALLY selfish of you to want those who want to zerg to instead PLAY THE WAY YOU WANT instead of how they want… but sure, we can bring those arguements back from the dead if it tickles your fancy.

thefantasticg.3984:

Seras.5702:

And as for people still zerging and not learning, I recently got my Triple Play achievement yesterday. That’s a zone-wide achievement and it means people are learning how to play properly rather than mindlessly zerging for loot. Anet doesn’t have to spell it out for us. We should have to learn the right mechanics & strategy to win.

As we found out with the Scarlet Invasions it is EQUALLY selfish of you to want those who want to zerg to instead PLAY THE WAY YOU WANT instead of how they want… but sure, we can bring those arguements back from the dead if it tickles your fancy.

It’s not exactly the same.
Both Invasions and the current LS have a clear intended goal for players to achieve. It happes that, the way rewards are stablished, an unexpected playstyle has shown to be way more profitable in terms of loot.
Players are hardly to blame for sticking to the most profitable way of handling the content, but the issue is no way a “play the way you want” related one. It’s clearly a design failure where one task is assigned to the playerbase and another cross-activity, actually counterproductive to the original idea, ends being way more profitable.

thefantasticg.3984:

Seras.5702:

And as for people still zerging and not learning, I recently got my Triple Play achievement yesterday. That’s a zone-wide achievement and it means people are learning how to play properly rather than mindlessly zerging for loot. Anet doesn’t have to spell it out for us. We should have to learn the right mechanics & strategy to win.

As we found out with the Scarlet Invasions it is EQUALLY selfish of you to want those who want to zerg to instead PLAY THE WAY YOU WANT instead of how they want… but sure, we can bring those arguements back from the dead if it tickles your fancy.

That’s a foolish argument. That’s like saying it’s selfish of me to want the players in my dungeon group to kill the champs instead of /dancing with each other. I’m supposed to want my allies to play in such a way that is beneficial to them as well as us as a whole.

The event was designed to give greater rewards for organized play rather than zerging. Which means even the selfish people who just want better loot will benefit from organized play and saving 1500 citizens.

Seras.5702:

The fault isn’t with the event. The fault lies with the selfish & lazy zergers who want to autoattack en masse for blue bags rather than win the event. Effort is required to save 1500 instead of 600.

And as for people still zerging and not learning, I recently got my Triple Play achievement yesterday. That’s a zone-wide achievement and it means people are learning how to play properly rather than mindlessly zerging for loot. Anet doesn’t have to spell it out for us. We should have to learn the right mechanics & strategy to win.

The zone-wide achievements are rubbish and indicative of nothing. I completed almost all achievements without lifting a finger or even realizing what I needed to do for them. I still don’t know that for some of them, and don’t care to, because I already have them. It happened when I was just exploring and looking for rubble. I just needed to do some more escort events and some of the events that spawn at 40 minutes.

Mission accomplished, nothing learned, not planning to go back in there because it’s boring. The events are lazily designed, all just about killing mobs, even the escort events. You can do your very best to keep the madly dashing NPCs alive and succeed brilliantly, yet not get credit for the event, because you didn’t kill a monster. Asinine!

All that killing wouldn’t be so bad if there was even a single interesting fight to be had anywhere. But no, nothing new, just run-of-the-mill mobs all over the place and even the 3 boss-kill events at the end are sadly uninvolving. I’m not going to bother even trying to go for the 1500 citizen rewards. Going back in there on the off-chance that enough people there give a kitten , that’s not worth 45 minutes of my time. And I won’t blame anyone for not giving kitten , because I can’t give one myself.

I tried this with TTS last nite, and we came close in my run. I think we were short maybe ~90 people? They attempted to try it again during Oceanic time, but I’m not sure if they succeeded. It’s really really hard to get 1500, but not impossible.

Now that I’ve got all my escort / event achievements I pretty much always roam and save citizens. Way more trouble than its worth to be honest, I’m sitting here solo facing groups of normal enemies and veterans with stuns and knockbacks out the wazoo (the elites I sadly have to just ignore, which sucks because they guard the road and block citizens from getting by in some spots) and frequently getting killed or needing to run off to lose aggro. Every once in a while I come across an impromptu “group” of players doing the same and have a much better time, but more often than not the group will end up going in separate directions or leaving for an event or something and I’ll be solo again.

In the end I end up with maybe 30 bags at most (plus the 10-15 bonus for being in the zone when the miasma reaches full) and a handful of deaths when I could probably be pulling 3-4x that zerging with much less risk.

Meanwhile the zerglings are pulling in tons of bags AND they get to benefit from my work and the work of other people actually saving citizens. I think that’s the main problem here, the zerg gets ALL the benefits. They get their mass quantities of individual loot and the zone loot on top of that. Sure, no one is getting to that 1000 bag much less the 1500, usually just the 600, but that combined with the loot bags is just fine for them. Its only the roamers that “need” to get to the higher levels to make up for the fact that they aren’t pulling in mass numbers of supply bags.

Mind you, there’s nothing Anet could possibly do about that. Its a map-wide effort and the zergs are helping some, even if its not a lot, so you certainly can’t refuse to give them the zone bonus bags (even if there were some way to determine that, which there probably isn’t). And it probably wouldn’t matter even if you did.

Another thing that doesn’t help at all are the waypoints. If someone dies in a zerg, they’re probably either close to a waypoint anyway (since most events are at least somewhat close to WPs) or can just sit there and eventually get revived. If I, being my solo roamer self, die while roaming for citizens, chances are I’m going to have a couple minutes of running through aggressive mobs to get back to where I was after I waypoint. I get the idea of the waypoints being contested, aggressive mobs everywhere and all that, but its really a pain to get to many of the citizen-rich areas of the map from the limited waypoints we’ve got. Having all the waypoints open or at least having a few more in some of the more remote areas (like the right side of the map) would really help.

I have heard rumors of the rare and mystical overflow that actually coordinates and saves citizens and gets over the 1000 mark. I can’t say I’ve stumbled upon one of those rare beasts in my runs, but I hope to one day. In the meantime I suppose I’ll continue shooting myself in the foot and saving citizens for the glory of the zerg.

It would be nice if you would only be possible to get the halo-potion if you rescue a certain amount of citizens in total. Like, be able to get it once you’ve personally contributed to save 10000 citizens. The horns on the other hand should be obtainable even if you just zerg all the time without really caring about the citizens.

Though the problem there would then be, that people might get mad at eachother if someone encourages an NPC that they just wanted to encourage…

Electro.4173:

Now that I’ve got all my escort / event achievements I pretty much always roam and save citizens. Way more trouble than its worth to be honest, I’m sitting here solo facing groups of normal enemies and veterans with stuns and knockbacks out the wazoo (the elites I sadly have to just ignore, which sucks because they guard the road and block citizens from getting by in some spots) and frequently getting killed or needing to run off to lose aggro. Every once in a while I come across an impromptu “group” of players doing the same and have a much better time, but more often than not the group will end up going in separate directions or leaving for an event or something and I’ll be solo again.

I’ve had better luck roaming with my thief, I can take on a couple normals or a normal or two and a vet but if they come at me three four five at once I’m slapping down Shadow Refuge and running. Elites are an instant nope.

Which is bad as I’ve found civilians stuck behind elites. Last night I found there’s a good half-dozen plus to rescue at the second set of Asura gates, all of whom were stuck behind at least a pair of elites. I’m almost tempted to dish out for a commander tag just so I can flip it on and wait for the zerg to help clear the area.

Electro.4173:

In the end I end up with maybe 30 bags at most (plus the 10-15 bonus for being in the zone when the miasma reaches full) and a handful of deaths when I could probably be pulling 3-4x that zerging with much less risk.

Which I still don’t entirely comprehend. Blues, greens, and random mats are not a common drop from the bags, I’m almost having better luck from random drops than I am from the bags themselves.

Also remember that you have to get the rescued to the nearest gate or Whispers agent to gain credit. Encouraging only gets them moving, you have to escort them all the way to where they can either escape or stealth their way out for them to be officially rescued.

I just gotta start I love this event and this whole idea, it’s amazing, but it has its flaws.

First off, the event clearly tries to promote saving civilians, and even if you can get that counter up by completing events, the best way is to go out and save civilians yourself to increase the number.

The problem is, that for anyone just going around saving civilians, you miss out on a lot of loot opportunities, even if you kill the normal mobs on the way. You will get less loot than someone going in a zerg, and someone in a zerg still gets the same civilian reward as you do. Couple that with the fact that the events are quite anti-zerg, meaning you lose the events easier with the more people you have, which means people in zergs contributes even less but still rewarded.

Then you have the heirlooms dropped from the rubble. I love this idea, but it’s a very selfish goal, which is really ironic with the “Selfless Potion”. Don’t get me wrong, you can save civilians and do events on the way, but you can just skip them all and go straight for the rubble and still be rewarded.

What needs to be done? Add individual rewards to saving a civilian. Civilians should be the ones that gives you the most of the refugee heirlooms and belongings, cause they are the refugees. See it as a token from them showing the gratitude you saved them.

I think this would balance the loot vs gameplay style during the event, split up zergs so more events completes and increase the civilian saved during these events. More people would be inclined to go out and save civilians, as they’d get rewards, rewards which you can use at the vendor after to get something quite as equal to just killing mobs and doing events. To make saving civilians even more encouraged, you can add achievements to it, just like locating the rubble.

In the end, the idea here is to add individual rewards for saving the civilians, cause why save civilians when you can get loot from zergs AND get the event civilian reward as a bonus?

Do post your opinions and suggestions to help with this idea.

Electro.4173:

Meanwhile the zerglings are pulling in tons of bags AND they get to benefit from my work and the work of other people actually saving citizens. I think that’s the main problem here, the zerg gets ALL the benefits. They get their mass quantities of individual loot and the zone loot on top of that. Sure, no one is getting to that 1000 bag much less the 1500, usually just the 600, but that combined with the loot bags is just fine for them. Its only the roamers that “need” to get to the higher levels to make up for the fact that they aren’t pulling in mass numbers of supply bags.

The group reward is so small that it wouldn’t make much a difference for the people farming the events. It only makes a difference for the people roaming around trying to do the rescues since they get almost nothing otherwise.

Deleted my last post:

In the end, I think it’s safe to say that the vast majority of people are working towards rewards, and it nice to see your progress as you go. This is why we see daily’s and monthly’s in the upper right of the screen; so why not add something similar to this event so people can see their progress to the top reward?

Give 2 separate rewards for the event: Personal and Group, and award an “x” number of bags based on how you do. It could look something like this, we see this on the screen:

Personal:

0/50 citizens rescued
0/1 Miasama events completed
0/5 Escort events completed
0/1 Bosses killed

or something to that effect. Completing all those would give you a personal max bag reward at the end.

Group:

0/1000 citizens rescued
0/3 Miasama events completed
0/15 escort events completed
0/3 bosses killed

So on and so on. I’d much rather see this as it could give people more insight and incentive to actually do multiple things.

I made a topic just like this, without noticing this one: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/escape/Suggestion-Civilians-Individual-Rewards/first#post3671001

I wholly agree with this. As I said in my topic, you are really undermined as someone saving civilians, everyone gets the same reward for reaching that civilian cap, even if you zerg around doing nothing but wait for events.

As I mentioned in mine, let civilians drop Found Heirlooms and Found Belongings as a token of gratitude. This fits so well with it and one of them as you can buy stuff with it from the vendors, though I’d advice to decrease the silver required for them to make it an actual reward. Then add achievements, cause it makes more sense to be rewarded with achievement points for something as selfless as rescuing civilians rather than go poke around rubble for Found Heirlooms that only rewards you.

I also think that as much as I love the direction Anet is taking this game, with the more recent anti-zerg events, it’s not that informative. People are still in the old mindset that zerg = best way to win. There needs to be way more information in-game and tools that can show everyone that zerging is in the past.

Tyragon.2496:

I also think that as much as I love the direction Anet is taking this game, with the more recent anti-zerg events, it’s not that informative. People are still in the old mindset that zerg = best way to win. There needs to be way more information in-game and tools that can show everyone that zerging is in the past.

Zerging is still the best way to win if winning means getting the most loot. As an example, some people have mentioned that you get 100 of the bags for reaching 1000 saved. Meanwhile the farmers were getting over 200 already.

I tried it joined a zerg, was a little fun, but soon went back to the FGS train…

Arikyali.5804:

First off, Anet, you guys did a pretty darn good job. I really like the event. I love the concept, I love the design team’s burning chaotic city, and I love hating you guys for demolishing all that is Lion’s Arch. I love having the chance to take my stealthy thief out in PvE. I also like you’re taking a proactive step with breaking up mindless zergfest.

…The problem is that most people don’t know that.

We still have players tagging up shouting, ‘Stack on me to win this event!’ People are still zerging for peanut loot bags, and people bypass the dead and terrified citizens. No one seems to understand that saving the citizens of LA is a map-wide effort, and best done by actually saving its citizens. On the first day, my server managed to save close to a thousand people, but I haven’t seen that since. It’s usually stuck around 500.

I get bored of zerging, and have had at more times struck out on my own, or with small groups of players. But there have been one or two times where I’m fighting alone, and someone just runs past without assisting because they’re trying to get to the next zerg event.

Zerging is counter-productive. It scales up events, and it distracts people from saving the scared citizens. Breaking up the zerg needs to be more obvious. There is more loot gained based on the citizens you saved, but everyone will keep zerging because 1) they don’t know there’s a chance to get better loot, or 2) they know, but since too much don’t know/don’t care they’ll just go back to zerging. Basic zerg loot is better than solo loot, if only 500 people are gonna get saving.

I know these events are meant to be ’don’t need an instruction manual and everyone figues it out in five minutes’….but no one’s figured it out.

But the loot is predominantly the issue imo.. the loot is just not worth the effort.. I mean I have seen nothing but blues and greens dropping repeatedly.. granted I haven’t been in a run which has maxed the tally, but have been in several where it hit the penultimate levels.. only for rewards to not even be granted – its been bugged out so many times that its just another reason why its a bit of a fail content release.. its actually promoting zerging not reducing it.. once the achievements are done its nothing more than tractor funfest. The only real effort is getting the high amount of heirlooms for the potions… and many are gunna just buy them now any ways so that’s significantly reduced motivation.

I am not saying I agree with how things are, I dislike zergfesters as much as the next person but sheep mentality is rife in GW2 and all the whiles ANET continue to implement this kind of content so too will the zergwars continue.

Now ANET go fix the ruddy main server event spawn/reward mechanics’ and whilst ya doing it fix Lawson.. 7 times its bugged on me now…. so nothing left to do now other than join the zerg

Manasa Devi.7958:

The zone-wide achievements are rubbish and indicative of nothing. I completed almost all achievements without lifting a finger or even realizing what I needed to do for them. I still don’t know that for some of them, and don’t care to, because I already have them. It happened when I was just exploring and looking for rubble. I just needed to do some more escort events and some of the events that spawn at 40 minutes.

Mission accomplished, nothing learned, not planning to go back in there because it’s boring.

Congratulations. Everyone else did what was needed while you reaped the rewards doing nothing productive. Your story is anecdotal and proves nothing. The facts of the event remain.

Nothing learned? That’s your short-coming. Clearly you’re not enjoying the event and that’s your prerogative. You judge the mechanics by your achievements and not the success of the event. I’m glad you’re not going back in because I’d like to think the people in my overflow are working together for higher rewards.

This fits in really well with the heirloom rewards. They just made one mistake.

Horns should only be earned for fighting mobs, and letting the citizens fend for themselves and die.

Halo should be earned for saving citizens (and giving up the loot that comes with the mobs)

Great ideas!

I really like the idea that in addition to searching in the rubble saving a civilian would give you something like the heirloom as a token of thanks, though it should be once you made sure they got to the safe point. I see rubble searching as promoting the selfish potion and saving the civilians as promoting the selfless one.