Guild Wars 2

The actual purchasable rewards are good.
The entire problem with this event is the ludicrous amount of time that is expected to be put in to get anything from this event due to the laughably low amount of currency we get for doing these events over this infuriatingly short amount of time.
A problem compounded by the fact every subevent in this is boring.

Tapioca.9062:

Ashen.2907:

Fernling.1729:

The good thing is that we already know HoT is better than this. The first story instance we played in the bwe is a million times better than this. We’ve waited this long for an update, we can hold off another month for the release of HoT.

Perhaps.

Someone on the fence about buying HoT sees this event and wonders if this is what Anet considers to be an engaging and rewarding game experience and if this is how they see the threat of Mordremoth.

This is a good point, I’d also like to add that the thin slice of content we’ve been shown in the beta is not necessarily indicative of the entire product’s quality. For instance, compare the first two arcs of the personal story with the later arcs. The early content, what we were shown before release in the betas, was head and shoulders above the arcs in the middle and end.

Big thumbs up on this point. With as badly designed as this event has come out. Its not inspiring confidence in what we haven’t seen in HoT.

Problem is threefold.
1) This event is not rewarding: You lose gold just participating and you get practically none of the currency you need to buy items for your time invested, which even when you have the currency you have to spend even more gold to get anything. We get no drops, no karma, no xp to offset our costs to participate in this event.
2) This event is only for 4 days, which means if we want anything from this event we have to massively grind the long rotation that takes multiple hours to do
3) It fails its stated objective as being an event new players were meant to meet veteran players and get involved in guilds. Most of us vets are extremely irate over this event and as such we’re not sociable or looking to make new guildmates.

If either of those first two weren’t true, the event would still be boring, but it’d be tolerable. If we got a lot of the currency the time wouldn’t be an issue. If we have a lot more time (say till HoT came out) the low accumulation of the currency wouldn’t be an issue.

The original Southsun?
It was laggy because of hardware limitations, and it upscaled harshly. But it was at least an interesting fight if you had a good connection. And it actually gave decent rewards at the time for the time they asked you to invest. Plenty of people got Precursors at that event and we all got a free exotic trinket and a 20 slot box (which most didn’t have) at the time.

Yeah, this event is BAD as its designed.
-We spend more money than we get, the mobs drop nothing to recoup our losses waypointing to get the things.
-The Rewards cost too much to get compared to how LITTLE of the currency we need to buy it all we need. One complete round for the first time in a day takes you 3 hours and gets you 60 guaranteed Blooms from daily map reward, and then likely an average of 10 blooms per map for your stacks (if you’re lucky 15 blooms). So 90 Blooms Daily on just your first run for that day. Doing it only once each day gets you a total of 270 blooms (this is devoting 3 hours of time playing GW2 to get, including the 30 minute breaks) or 360 if you got your blooms from before the patch went in. Then on average for every additional run after that you’ll get 30 blooms for every 3 hours of time devoted after that. Which means at a minimum, if you wanted to get the best reward, you need to devote at least 18 hours of time in game waiting for these events to pop. This does not include the apparently hour long break after the third round. And then on top of that you have to pay 10 gold. For only one of the big prizes, if you want the other one you have to add another minimum of 45 hours to get assuming you do other things in those large breaks between the rotations. And that’s ignoring the Armor Skins which anyone who likes armor would want.
-This event was advertised as a way to get new players involved in the game. Mission Failed. New players can’t possibly afford to participate in this event. Not only that, but because of how much this event is costing us vets and how much GRINDING we are expected to do, we aren’t having fun and certainly have little desire to recruit people while doing this unfun event.

Same story here. Tried logging and logging back in, its cleared our Guild Tag and all of our progress.

Personally as far as scenarios/boss/levels I’d like to see.

Well as surprising as this likely would be given how many of these guys are in the game already, I’d like to see a Centaur Fractal. Centaurs with elemental bosses and the like, we have models in game already for giant fire and earth elementals so having these get some more play in the game would be great to have with new mechanics involved as well. Maybe something from around the time of the Elonian colonization of Kryta or during another conflict involving them.
-Maybe a three boss fractal, a Fire Elemental, an Earth Elemental, and then a Centaur. With an option to kill either elemental first, with the centaur getting buffs based on which was killed first.
-Make the final fight against the centaur a chase fight, where he runs along a course peppering the party with long range attacks and sending centaur after the party as they chase him down.

A fractal featuring the Jotun during their height, before the fall of their culture would be interesting, perhaps showing the events of their fall in more detail or some great conflict between them illustrating why their culture was doomed to fail in the first place or won’t ever reform.
-Have this be a scenario like the Ascalonian fractal, a siege situation where we could take the part of Jotun of a rival tribe/city/faction whatever it turns out, charging through the fractal to kill the enemy generals and leader.

A fractal featuring Zommoros’ imprisonment into the Mystic Forge would be interesting. In fact if the players act as a part of the imprisonment process it could explain why he seems to hate us more often than like us, that despite the fractals nature he realizes we saw and “helped” during that event.

A Largos fractal, turn us into Largos and go on a series of hunts for powerful targets, these could be anything and can be set in any setting near the water.

A Kodan Fractal of some sort. Perhaps on one of their iceberg ships during Jormag’s awakening and subsequent attack on them. This would be a good way to introduce people to Jormag as our first sight of him, even if we don’t see all of him or even see him directly. Just seeing what Jormag can do to a huge culture with these fortress like floating cities.
-Have boss fights be corrupted ice elementals and Kodan who become corrupted would be awesome for this
-Have the dungeon twist and turn inside a giant Kodan Ice ship would be a very big change of pace from the colors and designs of most of the other fractals.

To answer that request for proposals that meet a middle ground between randomness/replayability/rewards, I had this idea after reading through the topic.

Proposal Overview
Breather “Fractal” Interludes. Short little areas between fractals on higher levels that add a breather of sorts between full fractals.

Goal of Proposal
Variety in Fractals and to bring in more players to higher level fractals, adding in something small that would increase the potential rewards and just uniqueness of fractals that aren’t present after reaching tier 3 rewards (Fractal level 31 and up).

Proposal Functionality
After every fractal add a chance to spawn into a “breather fractal” something that doesn’t count towards the three fractals you need to do prior to a boss fractal. These “breathers” can be short little cutscenes to show off some lore, a small “town” scene where we can buy various items and repair our armor (and could have unique items), could be little fields of resource nodes of various kinds. These do not need to be complicated fractals or even very large, just small little areas that can show up randomly. The lore breathers could grant a small reward for sitting there and watching it like karma, empyreal fragments, dragonite ore, etc in small amounts.

And to further help minimize the feel of inefficiency in playing. Make the quality of the breather level dependent on which fractal you did prior to it. So Dredge for example could be weighted so that it has a great chance to give you a great breather afterwords.

Some possible examples
-Lore Scenes from the Living Story
-Sneak Peak Lore from potential future lore updates (the Mists aren’t us actually being there so these could easily change)
-Random Personal Story missions with agony added in
-Random scenes from past stories that never got a chance to be told in GW1 or before it, or between GW1 and GW2. These could lead to new fractals later down the line.
-Small towns from other continents to show off other parts of the world with merchants that could sell things like recipes or materials for the crafting professions (unique stat combinations, new types of foods, raw materials for cheaper prices but in limited amounts, special potions, etc), perhaps with unique skins for weapons or armor. We could see some Canthan or Elonan towns here without Arenanet having to produce entire zones to let us see it in, or even things they have only alluded to or have in their notebooks somewhere. Heck we could even have pre-dragon Krait cities we could get a chance to look at if they wanted to do that.
-Small areas with various resource nodes (say 5-20 depending on the rarity of the node), which could include Living Story nodes like Mithril/Orichalcum veins with a chance at Azurite, Quartz Crystal Nodes, Candy Corn nodes, Toxic Seedlings, etc.
-Small areas with a world boss of some sort with agony added in scaled to be possible with a five man party that can be cleared or skipped, with something like double its normal rewards for doing it.

Associated Risks
Depending on how complex these “Breather” zones are it could take a lot of resources to produce. I would say to mitigate this to keep things fairly simple, maybe even intentionally disjointed in some cases (think sort of like Dessa’s Lab).

This could lead to a lot of incomplete runs or a lot rerolling. So to mitigate this, make it so these breather fractals can only occur after finishing two fractals or even only after having done three and it only appears between the third fractal and boss fractal. Or after getting a breather you get a debuff that prevents you and your party from getting another breather for a certain amount of time (dependent on when you get the breather, for example, getting it after the first fractal could give an hour debuff, the second 30-45 minutes, and the third could give you a 15-30 minute debuff).

-Continuing on from previous post-

And then at the end of a run after the boss fractal, based on the difficulty of all fractals done, additional rewards would be given. Doing the hardest fractals should grant a 3-4 times greater reward than doing the easiest fractals.

To go along with this I would propose an increase in the number of things one could purchase with fractal relics to make it more exciting, maybe material bags to help facilitate ascended crafting. Ascended crafting materials being on sale. The other ascended accessories that you can’t purchase with relics, make it possible to infuse these other accessories besides just the back piece and rings to give the gift of ascension more use. However keep the majority of items with full stats on them or a direct use (such as item boxes/bags/etc) account bound

Obviously enough I am not proposing changing the fractals as they are too much as the variety in challenge and length is something I personally do like and believe can lead to interesting fractal designs in the future if the devs behind newer fractals aren’t worrying about those two factors. I would say making it easier to reset parts of fractals (such as the arms for colossus after a failure) would be good changes to make, but the actual difficulty should be kept intact.

Associated Risks
<What risks or problems can you foresee with this proposal which you would like to have assistance on from other members of the CDI>
Well I can’t see too much around some of this, but there are obviously issues:

The most obvious being this does lend itself to elitism amongst players looking to do the highest level of fractals and not doing lower levels because of the change in how rewards work.

The next most obvious is the programming issues and bugs that can occur from allowing the players to choose the fractals they do. And Fractals already have their fair share of issues that are being discussed.

While I am suggesting we keep the effect of fractals to the economy to a minimal, fractals should also at the same time promote one’s advancement in ascended gear. Namely producing better infusions and helping one get towards ascended armor and weapons. Which at this time would need items that would be things we could put on the open market.

Apologies for being a bit verbose there.

The three areas of improvement I think are most important to discuss are:
1) Rewards
2) Player Satisfaction
3) Lore

Fractals have a lot of juicy potential for lore in the game, there is a lot we could learn about the past and future of Tyria from it. But as things stand we don’t get to experience a whole lot of concrete details about it. I’m not a deep lorehound like some players so I would leave this to others to discuss, but as far as Rewards and Player Satisfaction goes I would put forward this proposal:

Proposal Overview
<A short description of the proposal that is being put forward>
To improve drops and player choice in fractals allowing for a better user experience.

Goal of Proposal
<What problem are you trying to solve with your proposal>
A lot of players spend extended periods of time rerolling fractals to get the easiest ones (IE Swamp) or to avoid harder ones (such as Grawl or Dredge). Or to drop fractals because of the lack of a crucial role in the party.

Rewards in fractals leave many players highly unsatisfied, that the greater length and time fractals require would be better spent farming in Southsun, on a Champ Train, or doing the shorter dungeon runs.

Proposal Functionality
<How does your proposal work in regard in relation to the current design of GW2>
The main feature I am proposing is the option to allow players to choose which fractals we want to do. Allowing us to customize our fractal experience. This is specifically only the option to do so, if we would rather not do that then we can choose to instead do it randomly as it always has been. To expedite this process I would say the instance owner should be the one to choose which fractals to do.

This would allow people to choose short and easy fractals if they just want an easy run. Or if they are looking for a challenge to choose the most challenging fractals one after another.

To promote the use of either feature, each fractal should have a “weighted” reward level. Swamp should not be worth as much as Dredge for example As Swamp is just about universally percieved as the fastest and easiest fractal it should be the cheapest fractal with the worst rewards. While Dredge being seen as the longest and hardest fractal having the best rewards. This would promote the voluntary acceptance of these harder fractals in exchange for much better rewards

The rewards in question could consist of:
-Fractal Relics (should be available for any fractal)
-Pristine Fractal Relics (For the harder fractals)
-Mist Essences (Once again for the harder fractals)
-Rare/Exotic Loot (For all fractals)
-Fractal Skins (For harder Fractals)
-Ascended Gear (rings, trinkets, etc)

Some of those being guaranteed drops others not.

For example for Swamp I would propose it should get:
*1-2 Fractal Relics per five levels of the fractal (1-2 on Frac Levels 1-5, 2-4 on frac levels 5-10, 3-6 on levels 11-15, etc, etc)
*A 10% chance at a rare drop and 1% chance at an exotic.

And then to compare, Dredge should get something like:
*2-4 Fractal Relics per five levels of the fractal (2-4 on Frac Levels 1-5, 4-8 on Frac levels 5-10, 6-12 on levels 11-15, etc, etc)
*1 Pristine Fractal Relic per ten levels of the fractal (1 on Frac Levels 1-10, 2 on Frac levels 11-20, etc)
*1 Mist Essence based on the fractal level (1-10 a Vial of Condensed Mist Essence, 11-20 a Glob of Coagulated Mist Essence, 21-30 a Shard of Crystallized Mist Essence, and multiple essences past that)
*A Chance at a Fractal Skin of some sort past Fractal Level 20, maybe a 10% chance.
*A good chance for rares, 50% or so, and a 20% chance at an exotic.
*5% chance at ascended gear past Fractal Level 10

-Cutting for length-

LameFox.6349:

SynfulChaot.3169:

You are attributing how many people have an achievement as giving it value.

Looks to me more like they assign it value based on how others (whether or not they have it) perceive the difficulty you must have gone through to get it. At least, since they say they don’t care how many people have it, but they think it loses some sort of value because it was easy for someone else to get, that seems to be what they’re getting at.

Pretty much this.

Because it is most certainly a matter of pride yes. If something that we should be able to take pride in having gotten is made trivial it loses value to us significantly.

A Completionist might value the shiny number, but an Achiever values the journey it took to get the number. If that journey is trivialized it makes the latter’s experience having been a waste of their time and effort. If a Completionist gets the achievement, good for them, the Achiever wants them to have earned it though.

@Luthan
Oh that’s pretty much what I do and while I do certainly believe what I’ve said. I mostly felt a need to chime in on what had been a very one sided conversation.

But here, let me summarize why I’m still talking for you:

LunaticChaos.7138:

Look, we disagree alright, but don’t devalue the point of us who disagree with this practice here, our opinion is just as valid as yours.

SynfulChaot.3169:

I’m right you’re wrong, be quiet and sit down.

Of course paraphrased quite heavily.

@akamon
See the above as well

A player who wins an easy race still has earned their title. Their title was easier to get true, but they still earned it. There is only so much design can handle in this sort of situation. A player who is given the title has not earned it and devalues the title by having it until they have earned it. And most will not earn it as they are only there for the achievement.

And you know what? If there was a separate achievement, one that required you to say win 100 races, and it had a title as well. I can guarantee that we wouldn’t complain, because we know anybody who wins a 100 races got most of those legit as no one is that altruistic to take a dive hundreds of times. Least of all multiple people. We wouldn’t care how many people walked around with that title either, we would have all earned it the hard way.

And no we aren’t trying to impose our beliefs on anybody. We’re speaking up because we’re being told we’re wrong and selfish and have no right being members of the community. I’m asking that my opinion and point be acknowledged equally as valid, if less important to you than your own opinion on the matter. I at least am willing to acknowledge the point of the other side, but not if they completely devalue my opinion on the matter in response.

SynfulChaot.3169:

LunaticChaos.7138:

I take value in achievements based on how hard it was to get. If people just give others the achievement then it is easy to get and worthless beyond some pretty numbers to add to a growing pile of pretty numbers. Take the Clocktower from Halloween, lots of people finished that. But I value that one far more than Sanctum Sprint because despite the clocktower having no title, it was hard to get and no matter how many people have it that achievement remains hard to get and brings far more personal pride in having done it. The same holds true with the Distinction in Applied Jumping title, that was a lot of hard work to do and no matter how many people have it that doesn’t change.

I take only the value inherent in the achievement. I don’t care how few or how many have anything. They are not me and their status of possession of it does not affect me in any way whatsoever.

Anyone who needs others to not have something for that object to have value to them I feel sorry for. You are basically saying ‘you need to not have this for it to be important to me’. That is one of the most selfish things I have heard said here.

I will continue to help others as I am an altruist and that is my way.

Sounds to me you completely did not read my post. I said:

-The difficulty in attaining the achievement is what matters, the number of people who have it is irrelevant. The points are also completely irrelevant for that matter, which seems to be your measurement of worth.
-I value two achievements that lots of people have far more than Sanctum Sprint, one of which was very possible to get as it was something you did at your own pace with plenty of guides on how to do it with about a month to do it in.
-By trivializing the achievement through forfeiting your right to win, you devalue its worth making it as trivial and unnoteworthy as finishing Urmaug’s Secret in LA, something that is easy and takes 45 second to do. The more people like you who do this devalues it ever faster.

If everybody playing the game now who tries legitimately earned this achievement without anyone taking a dive? Great, perfect, no complaints, it was just as difficult as it was designed to be for everyone and everyone earned it. We all get to wear the title with pride.

@akamon
Actually I have seen people complaining to me to let them win. I promptly ignore them especially as it was a competitive room. They stayed for 8 races before leaving, and whined the entire time.

And no, I wear my title with pride after wresting it from the hands of three other highly competitive players that made me earn it as we landmined and lightning bolted and gusted each other the entire way. And continue to earn it with victories against other competitive players.

And I’ve addressed the rest of what you said already, I don’t particularly feel like repeating it.

@Synful
I take value in achievements based on how hard it was to get. If people just give others the achievement then it is easy to get and worthless beyond some pretty numbers to add to a growing pile of pretty numbers. Take the Clocktower from Halloween, lots of people finished that. But I value that one far more than Sanctum Sprint because despite the clocktower having no title, it was hard to get and no matter how many people have it that achievement remains hard to get and brings far more personal pride in having done it. The same holds true with the Distinction in Applied Jumping title, that was a lot of hard work to do and no matter how many people have it that doesn’t change.

SynfulChaot.3169:

LunaticChaos.7138:

Though I do ask you try not to devalue the other side’s point. We may be less numerous but our point is no less valid to us than yours is to you.

I think that such a view is selfish and I will not stop thinking that it is. Your opinion maybe valid to you. That I will admit. But I will not say that I feel it is valid.

Then I respond with that your opinion devalues and trivializes the hard work those of us who earn our achievements put into them and is equally as invalid. In addition to promoting the entitlement others feel to just be handed their achievements. Reducing the game to nothing more than a fancy checklist.
If you’re not willing to acknowledge that we who feel this way have a point, whether you agree its more important or not, then why should we acknowledge yours?

@Gabby
To me its a pvp race, its set apart from the rest of the world, it has concrete rewards that are actually pretty rewarding. To me if it was a pve content it should have been in the regular world.
And I’m primarily a PVE guy, I rarely PVP as I don’t particularly like to, but I love these minigames and find the competition rewarding as we’re all on equal playing fields more or less, latency being the one catching point which even that’s not consistently the same for everyone.
I regularly walk guildies and friends through jumping puzzles and recently helped some do the Lessons of the Sky Achieve. And I don’t play mesmer so I showed them how to do the jumps for it all. Spending half a day to do it. If someone asks me how to do something I’ll tell them or show them if its not overly out of my way. If I see someone down or getting mobbed I hop in and help them out.

@Synful
Though I do ask you try not to devalue the other side’s point. We may be less numerous but our point is no less valid to us than yours is to you.

@Coldin
Personally loved the tower. Bloody thing took me 7-9 hours to beat and my carpal acted up something fierce from it all, but was it EVER rewarding to have finished it myself.

Coldin.2840:

LunaticChaos.7138:

And while I did address the points in your post here. I really have to take issue with your “We’re so kind” comment. That’s really bloody arrogant to just come out and say that.

Not sure if you really read my post. I was saying we were NOT doing that. It would be arrogant if we were doing that. Which we are not.

My apologies there. Late night and I just got through with a big post, so yeah I sort of glossed over that part. I payed more attention to what you said in argument.

SynfulChaot.3169:

By that same definition purposefully holding yourself back is no less patronizing.

And I’ve never had a single person mad at me for being ‘patronizing’. I have had many people thank be for being nice and helping them get the achievement. So I’ll keep being nice and friendly. I don’t care if you consider that patronizing. Those I am helping consider it helpful. And that’s all I care about. Helping others. Giving back to the community.

Perhaps, but it is not obvious so no one will feel like I went easy on them, especially as I won’t mention it so they’ll never know. If I don’t need to go all out to win then no reason to do so. If someone catches up I have a sudden scramble to catch up to my own hubris which can lead to unexpected intense moments or someone tags me with a lightning bolt or gust midjump without me having stability I’ll suddenly lose a lot of ground. It remains a competition, and if I lose, its because I got arrogant. So I will have lost because it was my own fault not because I took a dive. I walk away knowing if I tried harder I would have won, they would walk away having legitimately beat me nonetheless as I lost fair and square because of my own arrogance.

And I think I’ve acknowledged in both my posts it is your right to take that dive. However if you do so it is your responsibility to realize that there will be people who agree with me and take offense at it even if they don’t say anything.

Gabby.3205:

I think you are over analyzing it.

We run to the finishing line because we are STILL competing and we STILL want to win. The only reason for us not to go ahead and cross the line is because we don’t need the achievement anymore and want someone else to get it. We want to race, not to take a stroll. That doesn’t mean that we think that we are better than the next person, it just means that though we got lucky that time we do not need that luck anymore, so we are passing the ball.
Yell at us if you want. Most people will get what we are trying to do instead of over analyzing it, and that’s why they thank us instead of yelling at us like you said you would do. You know, not everybody is a jerk, but maybe you are just one of these people that thinks that everybody else is in fact a jerk, no matter what they do. If that’s the case, well, nothing I can say will change the way you think, since you will just label me as a jerk too. I must be a jerk for porting people to the goggles with my mesmer, it must be disrespectful to them because I must be implying that they can’t get to them without my help, right? I don’t think so. I prefer to look at everyone from an optimistic perspective and assume that they are doing whatever they are doing with good intentions.
And “how it should be” is how each one of us like it better. If people are having fun, great, keep it up.

What I said in response to Syn is applicable too but to comment on your more specific case:
A jumping puzzle is an inevitability, you’ll eventually get it if you keep trying. No matter who you are you’ll eventually succeed. A race is just that, a race. It isn’t inevitable that you’ll win, you have to try, get a little lucky, and be skillful to win.
If a jumping puzzle comes out, I for one refuse to take portals until I do it legit. Its a matter of pride at having earned your achievement the hard way. Being able to look at one’s achievement score and say “I earned every point of that.” I absolutely will not let my own success be tarnished by anybody else having helped me get it. After that, if someone’s doing mass ports I’ll accept that, but I won’t ask or demand I get a portal. If someone offers to portal me specifically, I’ll tell them I want to try it myself, if I keep failing to the point of annoyance and they still offer I’ll tip them for their trouble and use it.

However lets look at the OP here, the entire reason he brought this up is because he was getting harassed for being competitive. If no one had harassed him he probably would not have posted this at all. While he hasn’t argued things properly, the very valid concern he was bringing up remains. That he was playing the game as intended and he was harassed for it by all manner of spitefulness. And people in this own thread are calling him out for being selfish and mean spirited if at the very least indirectly.

BlueSoda.6297:

ESKan.6782:

I’ve been called selfish for crossing the finish line. Made me do a double take, really.

Same happened to me, got a lot worse than being called selfish though :p Had to report several people.

We had someone articulate your side’s point very well. I decided to articulate the opposing side, or at least the reasonable aspect of the opposing side.
I admitted its your own right to do so, just as its my right to cross the finish line right in front of you if you chose to do that. I don’t deserve to be harassed for it if I choose to do so, least of all when I get there first.

Though the fact that this is an issue is a slight failing on how these minigames are setup as its only random matchup. The option to play with friends or have the option to have casual and competitive rooms (with achievements for both) would have been ideal.

Coldin.2840:

LunaticChaos.7138:

snip

Really over-analyzing it.

Patronizing would be if we were much more active in telling people that we got first, but since we’re so kind, we’re letting them win. Myself, I just hang out at the end if I happen to get there first, and usually mention it once or twice if someone brings up that they can’t win.

And while I did address the points in your post here. I really have to take issue with your “We’re so kind” comment. That’s really bloody arrogant to just come out and say that.

SynfulChaot.3169:

I don’t really see it a patronizing unless you’re trying to look down on others. I always cheer people on as they cross.

I mean, I could purposefully go slowly and not even bother to try. But that takes the fun out of it for me. I prefer to challenge myself for a good time. I race the clock, not others. Plus I like to see people as they finish. Like a bystander cheering on the competitors.

Yes, some may not like the idea of ‘being allowed to win’. Most just want the achievement and don’t care how they place. I prefer to cater towards the latter.

As I said, it may not be the intention, but that is what you’re saying by doing so. Whether someone is bothered by it or even would take it as such is also up to their perception. To me, doing that is patronizing and disrespectful to everybody else in the race and in addition to that also to everybody who works hard for that achievement.
Sometimes the worst patronization is unintentional.

I don’t go slow myself, I’ll not try to go absolutely top speed either if I’m outclassing a room. And I’ll cut down on my offensive power use as well. I handicap myself doing so but I don’t give people the win, I’m still treating them as someone who could beat me and thus I’m trying to win.

While I most certainly disagree with the term “Cheating” in regards to this behavior as has been rightly pointed out “it’s that player’s choice.” I do agree with the OP’s point he’s trying to make though, though he certainly did not phrase it correctly.

What I would call that behavior is “Patronizing”
-"to adopt an air of condescension toward : treat haughtily or coolly "
And to make this simpler “Condescension”
-"voluntary descent from one’s rank or dignity in relations with an inferior "

This behavior is patronizing, what everybody who stands at the finish line is saying is “Hey guys behind us, we’re better than you, but here’s a free win for you anyway.”
Sure it’s “Nice” but its disrespectful at the same time. It may not be the intention to be disrespectful, but that’s what you’re telling people when you do that. Snatching a victory from someone who has been winning and getting your achievement for it is far more satisfying than having someone “Let you win.”

People please remember this is a game and for those who need that definition:
Game
-“a physical or mental competition conducted according to rules with the participants in direct opposition to each other”
One of the keywords there is competition. In PVE the competition is between players and mobs. In PVP the competition is just between players. If someone wants to play competitively, well that’s the point you shouldn’t berate them for it. If someone wants to “let others win” then fine, that’s their choice regardless of whether or not others find that rude/disrespectful or not. I personally would yell at someone for doing that to me but that’s my point of view.
And if someone wants to call me out for being selfish or unsportsmanlike here. let me point this out as well:
Sportsmanship
-“conduct (as fairness, respect for one’s opponent, and graciousness in winning or losing) becoming to one participating in a sport”
A key part of sportsmanship is “respect” and “graciousness in winning or losing.” If you win don’t make a big deal out of it, if you lose don’t whine and make excuses. Respect your competitors and don’t be patronizing. You can certainly go easy on them or not take it as seriously as you would with a room of good sprinters, but don’t patronize.

Know what most of my lobbies have turned out like? Striking up conversations at the finish line while we wait for the match to end such as weird glitches that occurred during the race or sharing what our drops were or some other topic we get on, with me quoting cartoon villains if someone regularly beats me or we’re switching off in the top ranks, my favorite being Doctor Claw (I also quote him if someone comments that they finally won too). If random adds to the lobby don’t like it, they leave. If a room isn’t fun because I’m regularly trouncing everyone I get bored and leave, coming back a bit later to see if someone more fun is on. I get a good room I stay on and do like 15 matches in a row.
And that’s how it should be.

It is rather ridiculous that you only need two people to kick right now. This sort of story is quite commonplace because of how easy it is to kick people. The system as it is makes it very easy to abuse, upping it to three people, AKA the majority, would eliminate more than just a few abuses of the system.

As it stands, not much that can be done besides either making sure you only use 1 PUG person, or make sure you and your friends start the dungeon. I commonly hop into the dungeon myself before we even put up an ad to prevent a ninja of the instance owner.

You know, something I’ve always been curious about is general popular opinion on things in the game. And given some of the other suggestions here on this forum I think something that would allow us to view polls could be a useful tool for both people making suggestions and for Arena Net as well.

What I suggest is to make a location, ideally a building of some sort with npcs you talk to, in game with a unique interface of some sort where players can go and vote in polls that other players or Arena Net can set up. Making the results viewable by anybody who votes on a particular poll. This way we have a place where we can concretely point to and say that’s what people think. I say put it in game because the majority of people in any game never really ever go onto a forum, and those that do won’t necessarily go to wherever the poll is. And polls even if added to the forum would easily get drowned out by other polls or other forum topics.

To make it so that more people are likely to stop in and vote on polls, place the building somewhere convenient, like the middle of Lion’s Arch between the Trading Post and the Mystic Forge. There’s plenty of buildings that are just models there that can be used. I say make this a building you have to go to because there’s no need to clutter up our normal UI with anything extra. Placing it in Lion’s Arch somewhere convenient like that also makes it so its not a huge hassle for your average player to hop in, look through the available polls and cast an opinion real quick.

The most obvious negative to this would be trivial polls being added since this would be open to players under this setup. The easiest solution is to allow Trivial polls, but make it so one can sort through the polls by type with categories of “Game Mechanics,” “Classes,” “Story,” “Content Suggestions,” and “For Fun” as an example. Limit all polls as well so that you can only ask “Yes” or “No” questions, or “Agree” and “Disagree” questions. This would help limit polls that would skewed results. To help prevent further workarounds with that sort of thing, limit how long the poll question can be.

To encourage people to actually vote, a pretty simple thing that can be done is add an achievement related to it. Don’t make it worth too many points, treat it like the Agent of Entropy Achievement for example. Something small but worthwhile in the long run. A lot of people like achievements and something like that would be a good incentive to a lot of people.

Pros and Cons
+ A Useful Tool as long as polls are setup properly with good questions.
+ Non-intrusive, this is a big thing in my proposal. It does not clutter up the UI and does not constantly update us on the progress of a poll until we go check on it ourselves.
+ An easy way for people who normally would not bother due to time, motivation, or just apathy to voice their opinions on matters.

- The usefulness of the information is somewhat limited as it won’t provide solutions. People will still need to come up with a solution.
- There will still be completely apathetic people who won’t bother voicing their opinion.
- Polls could still be abused even with restrictions, having leading questions to force the sort of answer the person who posts the poll is looking for.

Now I’m not saying polls wouldn’t be nice on the forums as well. But quite frankly I find it would be more useful to have it in game where more people are likely to use it.

So Opinions? Additions?

While you do bring up an adequate point and it would indeed be nice to know for those of us who like friendly competition more.

The more likely result of this would be harassment, trolling, and hate whispers between servers. People enjoy spewing bile towards each other more than they enjoy praising one another unfortunately. There are a great deal more who do neither this is true, but the people who will make use of a system like this are far more likely to make their opponents miserable or angry than they are to be friendly.

From what I’ve heard the “Scavenger Hunt” is not being actively worked on, so really that could change into something much harder than a simple Scavenger Hunt.

I would say it should be something much harder than a Scavenger Hunt to enforce the “Legendaries should be Unique” thing. Or at least have a new series of Legendaries that are much harder to get as you can’t get them from RNG or from anything but a very hard dungeon complete with Agony and other fun effects and challenges.

Think I’ll save us some time and list the counter arguments:
-Then everybody can get a legendary, legendaries won’t mean anything
-It’ll flood the market with more legendaries and ruin the economy even more
-There’s plenty of good ways to get legendaries already, we don’t need anymore

And the counter arguments to those in order
-There’s already a lot of them out there, they already don’t really mean much beyond a fancy skin. If you aren’t seeing a lot of them you’re not paying attention.
-Economy is based on supply and demand, having more legendaries means more people are buying materials to make those legendaries which means more demand to the current supply.
-If by plenty of good ways you mean Random Number God, and anybody (except those who hit that one in a million chance) can tell you, RNG is not a good thing to rely on. RNG makes Legendaries sort of worthless as its not some herculean task to get it, you just got lucky a lot of times.

That the most common ones out of the way? Good, lets hear some new arguments.

Though for my part, it would have to be a very epic questline that would be next to impossible to do on your own or even with a group and even with a group only one person will get the precursor per run. Make the Precursor something you have to accomplish a herculean task to get to represent your actual mastery of the game which is what they’re meant to represent.

If guesting isn’t ruining the game, that its just people are doing more world events. Then a change to make guesting for a world boss would have no effect and we’ll all still have the same issues. So even if my more draconian suggestion (in some shape or form) isn’t done, the other suggestions that have been popping around wouldn’t cause any issues at all and would be “business as usual” for everybody involved. If nothing else a change to make guests not able to take advantage of our world bosses would just prove to us that “we just have bad luck.”

Albeit I would admit, ScribeTheMad you do have a point there in one solution.
Make the world bosses on strict “They spawn at these times” timers. That way regardless of whether you are on the overflow, your home server, or guesting, if you go to the zone at “X” time you have the opportunity to fight the boss. This would remove all the concerns of guests, having to keep track of spawn times, having to worry that you’re getting bad information from someone trolling you, having to worry about random disconnects midfight or right before the fight starts (and thus getting booted to an overflow upon logging back in). This would be a far more elegant solution.
And that chances that it would be the one that gets done? Considerably less than the chance they’ll do something to fix the guests abusing the system.
Edit: Reason why its less likely, because instead of fixing an abuse its making something so that its easier to “Farm” which has is apparently against the GW2 design.

And you say its right that people on their own server should be playing second fiddle to guests on our own server? That we have to camp out 2 hours ahead of time doing nothing but standing there not playing the game just so we can participate in our own world bosses? That we have to hope the game doesn’t randomly disconnect us five minutes prior to the boss popping and then we’re out of luck and have to wait three more hours for another shot?
How about no.

While I think Yalan is on the right track there, I think that’s the wrong way to do it.
What I think should happen is that if someone on the home server is zoning into a zone, and that zone is full, it should kick a guest in that zone and put them into an overflow to make room for the person from the home server. Obviously enough if there are no guests to kick the person who’s home server it is still goes to an overflow.

In normal maps this is not going to cause a problem at all and likely never activate except in places like Lion’s Arch. But for world bosses it should make it so that only members of that actual server will likely be attending the world boss, this makes it even less likely people will abuse the guesting system. As I can see trolls just staying in these zones to take up spots on the world bosses (and likely not even participate) just so that people from that server don’t get to participate in the world boss.

Lv 80: Engineer, Warrior, Theif, Necromancer
LV 65: Guardian (And currently working on)
Under Lv 10: Ranger, Elementalist, Mesmer

Obviously enough, I’m like all real Engineers, a tiny bit crazy.
Leveling up 1 of each class to learn how they all play.

Engineer was my first lv 80, and its sort of disappointing how badly they’ve been nerfed. We either have to do a huge skill dance to keep up with any role, do a lot more kiting, etc.
I will say this, the skills I got from having to be all sorts of fancy has worked wonders for my ability to play the other classes.
As for my Engineer, he’s been doing jumping puzzles and vacationing in Southshore while he waits for a PVE build that doesn’t give me carpal with all the button presses and finger movements.

First, I would still be trying to handle this via the support system. However when I get to somebody who will actually read my ticket instead of skimming it and sending me a prefab response my support account somehow gets locked. I become completely unable to log into the support sites. I’ve done this with two emails so far, and likely this will happen with a third if I tried it. I’m not willing to play email roulette here.
Before anybody even suggests this, any attempt to reset my password results in no email being sent to me for it. I have had it send me my username with no issue, but it will not let me reset my password so I know its not spam filter blocking causing it.

I have absolutely no issue logging into either GW1 or GW2, the game themselves. And clearly have no issue logging into the forum.

Quite frankly, I’d like to keep handling this via the support system, but only option I have now is posting here about this.

So what can Arenanet Forum mods tell me or what can other users tell me to help out here?

If an Arenanet wants to look at my last ticket that is still an issue: 121230-000223
-As a note there, my response to that last update would be that doesn’t work either.
This issue is my actual main account that the games are connected to, and is resolved but I became unable to log into the support system from that account after the last response: 121225-002034

Oh I get it too, the medkit thing after using a tonic. But I consider this a cool bug and likely client side. Did it three times in LA and no one seemed to notice it.

As a longtime gamer and MMO player myself I found things overall well done. The event had its issues. The Lagtastic First Day seemed to serve as a clear heads up that somethings needed tweaking and seemed to clear up for the next two days.

Final Event, the reinforcements during the Ancient Karka chasing had way too much health and during the bomb run where the big Karka would just pop out of nowhere that was a big issue.

But ignoring those two things, it was a rather well designed event, just had those two things bogging it down. Staying alive was a challenge there were things that added some variety to the fight. And then the rewards at the end, think it could have used one or two more things to balance out the frustration but I walked away with an upgrade, a precursor, and 3-4 gold for my trouble. Worth my time to do.

Here’s hoping Anet learns from the issues that popped up during this one and comes out with something bigger and better next time.