Completely agree. Ever since they buffed up the risen mobs, this has become even more of an issue. Risen are supposed to draw strength from being in large numbers. When 1 risen noble can take out 5 pact members with a single attack, something is wrong and needs to be readjusted.
Just take a look at the final Balthazar escort event. Most risen nowadays have AoE attacks that can drop down any NPCs in mere seconds, from veteran acolytes that summon exploding carriers to risen nobles and their OP symbols. If you let any mob reach the NPCs, be prepared to see the moral bar drop down instantly.
So instead of fighting along the Pact as a fellow soldier, we’re babysitting some kind of delusional group that think they’re needed to defeat the great evil balthazar priest. If Anet doesn’t buff up the NPCs, they should at least change them to some kind of “explosive cargo” so it makes more sense lore wise. Because it’s pretty sad to see the Pact’s finest go down by one or two attacks if players don’t intercept the mobs.
If you look at it lore wise, the player isn’t even the hero. You’re just a talented individual, in a world full of even more talented NPC’s. And yet the NPC’s eat dirt most of the time.
Why shouldn’t NPC’s be able to win events? If there’s no players around they should have a 50/50 chance at it.
I wasn’t really arguing that they shouldn’t be able to; I’m just making the point that if anything they at least need to have their defenses buffed so they can survive longer, whether on their own or with players helping.
Personally, I think the DE system needs some upgrades in that area – DEs shoudn’t really even happen unless there are players around, and the chances of one happening in any given moment should increase based on the number of players in the area. The rewards should also scale based on how long it had been since the last time the event was triggered.
This would balance out with the way bonus experience for kills works and would just make the game world, especially Orr, feel a little less ridiculous.
There’s already a lot of DE’s that only trigger when a player interacts with someone/something. I would love to see more variety, even going as far as removing most of a zones current events for new ones.
Making NPC’s actually useful, in all areas of the game, wouldn’t hurt either.
I would first suggest the people doing this event read dulfy’s guide. All the info is there on how to advance the event and which champs are at the end of each lane.
The issue isn’t one of ignorance, it’s one of gross incompetence.
Pretty much. Some people suck, and will always suck. There’s nothing you or I can do about this, and that’s the issue with these large events.
That’s a good thing. I can’t win unless I help other people win. kittening at them for losing doesn’t help me win, but explaining and encouraging does help me win.
I like it.
Actually, that’s the problem, I can’t help them win. If their platform fails all I can do is watch the timer count down. There’s only so much you can do to help those keyboard turning, mouse clicking players.
Long story short… if the people you find yourself with have no idea what they are doing and how to handle encounters beyond “Press 1 to Win”… that’s not really Arena.net’s fault. Sorry.
It is Anets fault that I can’t support those weaker players. You can do great in your lane, just laying waste to anything and everything, get to the platform and finish your boss, but the platform next to you wiped. There is nothing you can do about it. I can’t choose not to play with those people, and maybe they just got unlucky, but a small handful of people can fail the event for everyone.
The other servers don’t have it on farm, and OF still fail most of the time. Organization doesn’t do anything to stop bad players from failing their platforms.
Open up the platforms so I can finish this and stop wasting my time.
What all this comes down to is Entitlement. Certain players feel entitled to the best stuff as soon as possible. So when there’s gated end game content, and the player really wants it right away, they’ll call it a “grind”.
Guild Wars 2, to this day, still holds true to their Manifesto. Anet didn’t make a grindy game, but that doesn’t mean they left out the grind completely. You can play this game any way you want, and still have access to the same content, same story. The grind is there if you choose.
One huge mistake these complainers are making is that they feel they can’t live without Ascended gear. In their minds, they’ve convinced themselves that in order to be good at this game, you have to have the best gear. This is completely untrue. You can have max weapons, armor, and all trinkets and accessories, and still lose to another player clad in all Rare level gear. Skill will always hold more weight than gear.
Please note the following: BiS gear should be a goal, not a requirement. If you feel it’s a requirement, then that means you’ve forced the grind upon yourself.
Entitlement has nothing to do with the absurd drop rate for core crafting materials.
I miss the days of bots, when crafting materials could be bought at a decent price. Removal of bots from the game was the single worst thing to happen to the TP.
Agreed hehehe, would it be wrong to demand them back even after having reported so many. I would even send a person letter of apology to each one. I’m not sure how long that thread would last!
They could solve it by not making it a ridiculous grind.
What all this comes down to is Entitlement. Certain players feel entitled to the best stuff as soon as possible. So when there’s gated end game content, and the player really wants it right away, they’ll call it a “grind”.
Guild Wars 2, to this day, still holds true to their Manifesto. Anet didn’t make a grindy game, but that doesn’t mean they left out the grind completely. You can play this game any way you want, and still have access to the same content, same story. The grind is there if you choose.
One huge mistake these complainers are making is that they feel they can’t live without Ascended gear. In their minds, they’ve convinced themselves that in order to be good at this game, you have to have the best gear. This is completely untrue. You can have max weapons, armor, and all trinkets and accessories, and still lose to another player clad in all Rare level gear. Skill will always hold more weight than gear.
Please note the following: BiS gear should be a goal, not a requirement. If you feel it’s a requirement, then that means you’ve forced the grind upon yourself.
Entitlement has nothing to do with the absurd drop rate for core crafting materials.
And if it is a technical issue… Blizzard, with their glacial development pace, was able to solve the issue in their ancient WoW engine back in 2008.
Sad!
Ulari <— disappointed
It took them 4 years to do it.
While true, that doesn’t mean it has to take 4 years for every other game too
So if it took the 4 years to fix it, and they fixed it in 2008. In 2004 the best one could get would have been a single core Pentium 4 with an early 64-bit architecture, but Windows was not optimized to use it. I could maybe buy in to the fact that this hardware might have problems. 4 years later, in 2008, the first i7 processors appeared, quad core monsters with vastly more processing power. Dual core did not appear until 2006. It is shortly going to be 2014, ~10 years since the original issue surfaced in WoW and 6 years since Blizzard solved it. That is several lifetimes for computer hardware. These days, you can get 12-core, 16 core desktop computers with enormous amounts of RAM and power compared to that of 2008, servers, even moreso. ANet has no excuse for not addressing a problem that Blizzard solved on comparatively ancient hardware years ago.
This is assuming that it’s a hardware issue, which I think is unlikely.
Those other options will come eventually, and you already said that you want it some day, if you work at it a little whenever you play you’ll eventually get it.
Set the lockout timer to an hour, and have the reward some zone specific crafting item upto 1 T6 or more of a lesser tier. I just want a reliable way to farm T6 mats that doesn’t involve ridiculous drop rates.
Dont think “farming” is the idea here. Its getting people out and about and being rewarded for it, playing in whatever zone they want. Not another “find the most efficient route and drive it into the ground” as with queensdale champ train.
The fact that the hearts are locked for a month after doing them prevents farming and exploiting. This won’t please the farmers that like to find the quickest route between two points.
It doesn’t matter what the intent is or how long of a lockout timer there is, people will find the most efficient way to farm it, or ignore it completely if it isn’t worth the time. Farming and grinding are the same thing, and for me, hearts are a grind.
There is no efficient method for T6 blood, there’s only grind, you grind mobs or money.
I wouldn’t say everyone. Theres enough people running dungeons, fractals, running around Orr, or participating in Winters day or an LS event to denote that farming the most efficient path is not the only thing people do in the game.
Running COE is not very efficient, but I do it because its fun, as Im sure many others do.
Doing the jumping puzzle in wintersday isnt efficient and won’t net you anything really, but people do it because its fun.
Would you rather everyone in the game sit in Queensdale or FSG and run the champ train because its the most efficient means of karma? If this is the case, then delete everything else from the game, and just have these two methods of acquiring anything.
If you want people to go somewhere else, then make it worth the effort. A one month lockout would make it worthless for 29 days out of the month, which doesn’t improve anything. I don’t run champ trains because they’re boring, but farming mobs is just as boring and far less rewarding. I need T6 mats, but getting them on my own is the most tedious grind this game has.
You are assuming that we will only have one map to do this.
All zones would be open to this. Once you are locked out of one zone from completing all the hearts, you move onto another one.
No, I’m assuming hearts suck. Increasing the rewards doesn’t change the fact that for me it’s still a grind. I’d do it if it’s a guaranteed way to get the items I’m looking for, but it’s still a boring grind.
Set the lockout timer to an hour, and have the reward some zone specific crafting item upto 1 T6 or more of a lesser tier. I just want a reliable way to farm T6 mats that doesn’t involve ridiculous drop rates.
Dont think “farming” is the idea here. Its getting people out and about and being rewarded for it, playing in whatever zone they want. Not another “find the most efficient route and drive it into the ground” as with queensdale champ train.
The fact that the hearts are locked for a month after doing them prevents farming and exploiting. This won’t please the farmers that like to find the quickest route between two points.
It doesn’t matter what the intent is or how long of a lockout timer there is, people will find the most efficient way to farm it, or ignore it completely if it isn’t worth the time. Farming and grinding are the same thing, and for me, hearts are a grind.
There is no efficient method for T6 blood, there’s only grind, you grind mobs or money.
I wouldn’t say everyone. Theres enough people running dungeons, fractals, running around Orr, or participating in Winters day or an LS event to denote that farming the most efficient path is not the only thing people do in the game.
Running COE is not very efficient, but I do it because its fun, as Im sure many others do.
Doing the jumping puzzle in wintersday isnt efficient and won’t net you anything really, but people do it because its fun.
Would you rather everyone in the game sit in Queensdale or FSG and run the champ train because its the most efficient means of karma? If this is the case, then delete everything else from the game, and just have these two methods of acquiring anything.
If you want people to go somewhere else, then make it worth the effort. A one month lockout would make it worthless for 29 days out of the month, which doesn’t improve anything. I don’t run champ trains because they’re boring, but farming mobs is just as boring and far less rewarding. I need T6 mats, but getting them on my own is the most tedious grind this game has.
Set the lockout timer to an hour, and have the reward some zone specific crafting item upto 1 T6 or more of a lesser tier. I just want a reliable way to farm T6 mats that doesn’t involve ridiculous drop rates.
Dont think “farming” is the idea here. Its getting people out and about and being rewarded for it, playing in whatever zone they want. Not another “find the most efficient route and drive it into the ground” as with queensdale champ train.
The fact that the hearts are locked for a month after doing them prevents farming and exploiting. This won’t please the farmers that like to find the quickest route between two points.
It doesn’t matter what the intent is or how long of a lockout timer there is, people will find the most efficient way to farm it, or ignore it completely if it isn’t worth the time. Farming and grinding are the same thing, and for me, hearts are a grind.
There is no efficient method for T6 blood, there’s only grind, you grind mobs or money.
Set the lockout timer to an hour, and have the reward some zone specific crafting item upto 1 T6 or more of a lesser tier. I just want a reliable way to farm T6 mats that doesn’t involve ridiculous drop rates.
Well, ANet’s implementation of DEs (and their corresponding rewards) seem to show a lack of effort imo. To begin with, the rewards are generic. But frankly speaking, I’d rather they keep DEs as they are and put their focus on (traditional) quest lines that do offer some story-telling and unique rewards (skins worth transmuting, uncommon stat allocated gear, fun potions, etc).
If the quest isn’t repeatable and doesn’t help you towards your goal then it wont do anything to improve the game long term.
The game came out and was far more successful than anticipated, with tons of sales. Anet saw the dollar signs and decided to change the game away from what they originally designed (low grind, easy to get top level gear, horizontal progression) into a more traditional MMO — in order to keep these customers.
So we ended up with a game that was designed one way, but supported after release in a completely different way.
In the end, those who came for the original game were turned off, and those who want
a traditional MMO will surely leave when a new traditional MMO, one designed to be such from the bottom up, comes out.
That doesn’t make any logical sense. A large amount of sales right out the gate would tell them to stay the course, not the other way around.
And would it help if you could buy the crafting mats from the Influence vendors? Say, set the price according to what Tier it is, and then allow them to sell small stacks of wood, ore, and bags of rare materials (similar to what you can get from the laurel vendors)?
Sure. Say Ascalon vendors have blood and venom, Kryta vendors have claws and fangs, etc. It would certainly make grinding certain materials far more realistic.
…and people would buy less gems…
Not necessarily. Those people are buying gems to buy gold to get around the grind completely. Currently it’s near impossible to grind out T6 fine materials in a reasonable time frame. Making a grind that I can actively progress, ie not RNG BS, gives players who can’t or wont buy gems another option, which is still a positive move for the game as a whole.
And would it help if you could buy the crafting mats from the Influence vendors? Say, set the price according to what Tier it is, and then allow them to sell small stacks of wood, ore, and bags of rare materials (similar to what you can get from the laurel vendors)?
Sure. Say Ascalon vendors have blood and venom, Kryta vendors have claws and fangs, etc. It would certainly make grinding certain materials far more realistic.
You’re basically suggesting a rep grind. The end result of that would be similar to the champ trains, just in different zones, which doesn’t really solve the problem.
You may have a point here. Someone will work out the best pattern of events in each area to run for the rewards.
Is there any decent way to prevent that from happening? I know there’s a few bad ways that players would hate, but finding something agreeable would be better.
I do think that, aside from the altered skins and such, this should never be the only way, or the fastest way, to get what you’re after. My goal is to make DEs more worth doing, but not the only thing worth doing.
Make them fun to do. More diversity. Sure, they have hundreds of DE’s, but half of them are just waves of mobs for some amount of time. The current rewards are ok for the effort involved, but I need T6 mats, and I’m not going to get those reliably or at all in Iron Marches or Snowden drifts, so if I’m in that zone it’s purely for map completion or harvesting nodes.
You’re basically suggesting a rep grind. The end result of that would be similar to the champ trains, just in different zones, which doesn’t really solve the problem.
Traits could be more general/less specific. Guardian has a trait “50% chance on crit to chill enemies”, only affects hammers, and another trait that causes great sword attacks to heal. Why make it weapon specific?
I think Harathi should set the bar. It has a pretty extensive event chain, with a big old boss at the end. Work on making them interesting, rather than “kill X waves of mobs” rinse/repeat.
It may be a little of both. I’m sure they knew people wouldn’t do this every day. It’s likely that the toxin level increases at a set pace of (X) antitoxin per day. Each personal injection would affect the formula as X+1, X+2, etc… So on a high volume day, the antitoxin level would increase by (X) + lets say 1000 or something. Of course as interest died down, and the tower could not remain forever, the (X) per day continued to tick away.
Except that it didn’t increase at a faster rate the first few days..
Lol no xyonon, and elle that would be unfair as if you wanted to go that deep in to it in the green side of eb it’s raining and fire wouldn’t burn anything
You can apply burning underwater. Logic doesn’t apply here.
Oh no, this is outrageous! How DARE they add something with such a MASSIVE difference that FORCES people to grind like mad in order to stand a chance against other people!!!
/sarcasm
I wonder where are those: “Ascended will be mandatory because it will make you 20% stronger!!!”-people are now, they are awfully quiet…
Those people are now complaining that ascended is useless and not worth the time.
