Guild Wars 2

As Kegmaster and leader of a Keg Brawl guild, I’m waaayyy too far in agreement with this. I’ve been craving the ability to buy/rent my own private Keg Brawl server/servers and set up team matches and set rules of play.

MithranArkanere.8957:

From what NPCs say, there should be 4 ‘activities’ in divinity reach:
- Mark Haidryn’s menagerie.
- Uzolan’s mechanical orchestra.
- Mina’s shooting range.
- The Busted Flagon.

Looks like Bar brawls would happen in The Busted Flagon. And there’s some NPCs talking about the Busted Flagon hiring bouncers.
But once there there’s no one starting activities or talking about them. The only NPC with an unique name is a norn with an unique name, talking about drinking games involving axes. There’s also a poet, and no one is at the bar.

I’m guessing it’ll be added sooner or later, if the achievements slipped in some update.

4 month late correction, there’s actually at least 5 Divinity’s Reach activities if those are to be included, the last being the Smash Em Up that’s found in the same general Carnival path from Uzolan’s Orchestra to Busted Flagon.

Maybe at launch these were underdogs, but idk anyone who doesn’t expect a challenge from an Engineer or Necro in SPvP or WvW.

I wonder what kind of combat related mini games they could add in GW2 that take place outside of the capital cities like the challenge missions in GW1. Surely they’ll look something like the GW2 Guild challenges do now, but it would be awesome if they were scored and players/teams ranked on a leader board of some sort. It would do well to bring people into certain parts of the world. ESPECIALLY if these have unique skins and other shinies attached to them.

I only condone farming recoveries because it’s easily the most inconsistent part of Keg Brawl and, despite numerous efforts to discern any credible way to increase chances of it occurring, about all you can do is to stand as close as possible or behind the player getting the keg knocked out. And this only seems to happen about 20% of the time.

Kegs appear to favor the enemy’s possession when ejected. -shrug-

Mm, as a Kegmaster, I can agree with this. I wasn’t concerned at all about the achievements, I just enjoy playing Keg Brawl. A lot. I even created a Keg Brawl guild; Brawl Capital [PUNT].

So I hadn’t even really noticed how close I was to getting Kegmaster until I had already maxed every single achievement except Assists and Recoveries. Assists are easy enough to get if you’re focused on getting those, just pass it to your teammate while they’re near the goal. But while all others were maxed, my recoveries were only @ 120 something.

However, I didn’t really care to go after it until I hosted an event for the guild and wanted to show off in-case we wound up streaming it. With 2-3 players, or if you want to get it with a buddy, 4 players, you can easily get it in less than 2 hours of putting 2 on auto attack. :P However, the games are 15 minutes or so, so take that into account.

idk if admitting this is going to get me banned or something, but if you go into the corner by the snow mound along the wall, there’s a corner on the right side where you can use 3 players to farm. Two players on the same team stand stacked in the corner, while an opposing team player hits the keg out of one of the players hands repeatedly. So the player who’s getting the recoveries has to keep passing the keg back to the person getting it knocked out of their hands.

The way to do this with 4 players, which is considerably more efficient, is to have two players of the same team again, but now two hitters targetting different members. This way, no one actually needs to press or do anything. They can just chat or something. If they’re staggered right, you can just auto attack with 2 and keep knocking the keg into the other players hands as fast as the skill recharges, getting both players recoveries at about the same rate as the first tactic.

Murr, I made a list too It’s in my sig if anyone cares.

If you wanna grab one, add to that Circus Charricus, Black Citadel. It’s some type of twisted metal meets GW2 type deal, I think.

Also, Bar Brawl happens in Divinity’s Reach: Busted Flagon waypoint. Idk what tarnished Coast and their… special RP community’s gonna do about adventurers smashing each other over the head with beer bottles… but uhh, good luck to them whenever the hell that comes out. lol

You should add where and how you found these; doll jousting? I’m gonna see if I can find that… I thought I scanned DR entirely? Guess not.

I was so excited about GW2’s promise of 30 activities on launch so I’m more burned than anyone that these didn’t make it in.

As far as WvW is concerned, they removed culling and added a light vertical progression system through the acquisition of World XP, gained from kills or objectives, to acquire attribute points for WvW related things. Ex: Do more damage to Guards.

However, these two changes did nothing to help the prevalence of “zerg mentality” in the game. In fact, it’s seemed to enhance it. In the two highest matches(Tier 1-6), at least, small group fights are not as common as they used to be, meanwhile groups of 60+ people are far more common than they used to be.

Elitism most certainly is annoying, but in the case of builds that require a calculated amount of efficiency to actually successfully accomplish the goal that was set by the group, it makes sense.

For example, the CoF P1 Zerker Farms requires you to kill the bad faster than it can possibly kill you. If you’re not doing X amount of damage in X amount of time, not wearing the proper gear becomes an immediate detriment to the success of the team.

Pinging stats for gear is necessary when the application of any one individual’s skill is less important than the value of their armor stats. While rare in GW2, these can be the case.

That being said; I do not condone content that rewards reliance on gear instead of player skill and teamwork.

ASB.4295:

The charr dueling mini game was called bar brawl and would obviously be held in an instanced version of that bar in the Black Citadel you visited in your personal story. I forgot its name, it’s been too long since I last played.

ANet didn’t have time to implement all the games. Those games have been already planned and worked into the design of the cities, such as the shooting gallery and polymock arenas. The moa race track and miniature duel rink can be visited in game right now. They just don’t take you to an instance with the actual game, like keg brawl does.

I would like to see them being able to make games take place in the main map sometime in the future. I don’t know if that’ll be feasible or possible, though.

That first part is actually incorrect; the location of bar brawl is known. Several NPC’s around the city will tell you that it takes place in Divinity’s Reach at the Busted Flagon POI west of Dwayna Road. You can find out more about activities in my signature, I’ve found 9 so far.

I agree with a lot of what was said in this thread. It’s the worst type of irony, bordering on hypocrisy, that the pre-launch hype created by Anet’s infamous “When-it’s-ready” strategy has left those waiting for these mini games severely disappointed.

gamereactor.eu: Alright. Because I was thinking about, you brought up the bar brawl, for example Funcom had something like that planned for Age of Conan, and I’m not sure that made it in at launch. Is there any risk that something similar would happen to the activities? Or is it an integral part of the game experience in itself?

Anet Dev #1: These are getting built into the game itself, they will be there at launch. They are not something that we will tack on later, they are part of the cities.

Anet Dev #2: One of the things I can say is that we tend to, you know, we were pretty tight-lipped about the game for a long time and we tend not to talk about things unless they are actually in the game. So when we talk about activities, like when we talk about the bar brawl, or the shooting gallery, because they are actually in the game you can go in and experience them right now. And so there is actually very little chance that most things we talk about are not going to make it into the game just because we run out of time or anything like that. Because, as I said, we tend not to talk about things unless we’re very, very certain that we can do them. Certain as in they are in already.

Source: http://www.gamereactor.eu/articles/4160/Guild+Wars+2+interview/

Coming from a Kegmaster and leader of a Keg Brawl guild, this is the source of my sorrows and my anger for the past seven months. Please Anet, for the love of Grenth, get activities in the game x.x

JudgeD.5673:

Well we may not hold anything in our BL, but we have SM, TC hills, and FA bay (when I got off). When I saw BT, my first thought was, “Dat Zerg”. Anyway, hope y’all have fun tonight.

BT never had more than ~35 people in the same group together, and that’s pushing it. And we started out with even less. 15 of us were stuck in queue for the first 30 minutes to an hour.

Nice try though :o

Meh, I don’t know if Super Adventure Box counts as an activity. I guess it’s more just a mini dungeon, but uhh, it’s in a capital city.

At least they made a bit of content that focuses on fun and enjoyment as it’s primary draw, with skins being a neat perk to work for if you desire. That’s the essence of Guild Wars in my opinion, and it’s saddening that a small team of 10 or so out of ~250 appear to be the only people working in that mindset.

Drakh.3128:

Baroness.9506:

Has been some awesome fights VS KN so far.
kitten shame that there has been some wall jumping or fly hacking from FA in EB BG.

Fort Aspenwood seem to be making good use of line of sight hacks and terrain exploits when using arrow carts. Best way, just get a quick video and also report them.

FA is in the takes the lead and in come the hacks and exploit allegations. Let’s keep this kind of drivel to a minimum.

Great fights last night on TCBL. The 3-way Garrison fight with FA coming out on top after KN opened up the doors was tons o fun.

Most certainly was amazing. Looking forward to more fun in the future of this match-up.

I have character names Online and Offline. They’re not clever or interesting in any way other than the occasional trolling I get to when the word’s even vaguely brought up. It usually devolves to “Is Online offline or Offline online?”

Surmaturma.4823:

Hi,

Any update on mini-games? Order of implementation, teaser of things to come? Any estimated schedule for next game to be implemented? Any comments upon possibility to join as a party? E.g. by adding the as guild missions even or something, party-join is really important!.

Cheers

I’ve made a post about the current activities as I believe they’re planned so far from what I could find in the capital cities. Check it out.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Activities-you-don-t-know-about/first

I honestly don’t think any of these will see support for a long while though. :/ It seems this portion of the game has slipped into oblivion.

thehipone.6812:

Unless the mini-games start dropping rares and exotics they will just end up being dead areas, aside from the occasional achievement hunter or daily task completer. They should be low priority (although polymock was fun for a short while in GW1)

I don’t think they should be low priority. It’s offering more ways to play and enjoy the game. ArenaNet originally made this game based around the concept of fun, as opposed to a reward centric game design. If they’re going to forsake that, then I would say they’re forfeiting the entire vision they set out to fulfill.

I made a post about the activities that you can currently see in the game:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Activities-you-don-t-know-about/page/2#post1692212

It’s mentioned in this thread that you can always offer exclusive cosmetic rewards or leaderboards as another layer of competition or prestige – two things that were a core tenant of GW1 and ideally GW2.

It would also have the added benefit of creating a far more social environment if these were put into the capital cities. I think some would do well as persistent games, but even if they were all instanced, it gives people a variety of focused content dedicated to fun. It would certainly help to fill out the now beautiful but barren capital cities since people would now have a reason to go there, and it would be yet another reason why people would enjoy the game.

I don’t know, but I mentioned a lot of your post in the link attached to my sig.

I honestly wish there were more of these planned social tools in the game, but it seems like that stuff got pushed to the back of the line in terms of priority for the dev team. heck, Keg Brawl hasn’t gotten any love really since the patch that changed the #1 skill exploit (like way back in October or something), and that was just changed to the #2 skill which is still a very game breaking mechanic for the current activity.

I don’t think even ArenaNet knows when this stuff will get released, but I sure wish it would. :/

Cities were initially planned to be social hubs; it’s why ArenaNet put so much work into them. At some point though, due to whatever mysterious reasons concerning Anets time budgets or workload, a lot of social features got put on hold.

That includes but is not limited to the 30 activities that were supposed to be in GW2 at launch that would take place inside the capital cities. You can find out more about this on the link in my signature, but there’s no reason I can’t throw an additional link in this post.

Post about activities that we might eventually be able to play inside the capital cities

Wolfheart.1938:

I want moar minigames:(

Me too

So, I’m just gonna bump this so the OP isn’t lost in the void of QQ~

And to follow up on the last point of the OP: Man, I kittening wish they planned to do something about Keg Brawl, but considering the kitten title is still bugged (since LAUNCH) for players who had gotten the Keg Master title (or any of the requisite achievements) prior to the Wintersday patch,… and might I remind, that is Keg Brawl’s only reward… I doubt they even care about this portion of the game for at least the next few months.

Like, I can understand where the OP is coming from in saying that players who make up rules (me) is frustrating, and I try not to do it all the time, but I’m also genuinely trying to provide a better game experience for everyone involved.

I’m so sure this was in response to me(Plant/Mythical Patty Matt) and [PUNT]. And I do so when I think it’s necessary to preserve the sanctity of the game. Allowing multiple kegs VERY QUICKLY devolves into a race instead of a brawl. One team will grab one, the other will get the second, and then the balance of players attacking/defending kegs will shift awkwardly so you end up with 3v1’s and 1v4’s with no actual teamwork present.

That being said, I only do this under specific circumstances and encourage others to do the same. My personal feeling is that in a full game, more than 2 kegs simply makes the game really, really stupid. Like, it was intended, but I think I’m in the majority when I say it was objectively bad— I can see it requiring an added layer of complexity, teamwork, and overall depth, but MANY MANY people are not half as good at Keg Brawl as anyone who could reasonably put up with such nonsense.

So anything I do in Keg Brawl is in the express interest of the fun from playing the actual game. Not for winning, not for flexing my kitten. It’s for raw, unadulterated fun- fun from punching, kicking, and smacking the opponent and employing excellent teamwork in the efforts to have a good competitive experience.

… and I mean, c’mon. I can’t imagine anyone likes backdoor scoring x.x

I’m a person who avidly plays Keg Brawl and have even started a guild for it. There are at least 3 members in my keg brawl guild that, on paper, have the Keg Master title from just recreational play and would like to be able to display it, including myself. This really needs to be fixed :/

For more information on this topic, please visit the link in my signature. :-)

Yo, join this guild if you like Keg brawl, kthx!

As an update to the thread: Bar Brawl achievements have been added to the activity list. bar Brawl, however, remains inactive.

Please refer to the thread in my sig if you want to know more!

BladeBraverBureba.1052:

By the way, as I type this, we’re on the verge of taking the FA keep in EB again. And CD owns half of FA’s EB territory.

Where are those superior tactics, and why aren’t they saving you?

Because it is no longer our prime time, many of our commanders have logged off, and you just explained a scenario where our territory is being pushed by both CD and TC…?

Yeah, this was entirely FA’s fought. I apologize on behalf of them for not letting the parade go longer than 3 and a half minutes but I had fun while I was there. I got to meet some pretty famous people from the other servers through the DOLY guild too.

The “it’s red, it’s dead” was being advocated by the commanders in team chat when I was trying to advertise the event in map and make sure people weren’t attacking. But, meh, we have our version of fun. They have theirs. It’s just a shame their version ruins our fun. v.v

Someone should probably make it a point for the Yak not to be upgraded with guards… Also, what happens with Sentries?

Snowball mini-game going in at Wintersday. I really hope they keep it afterwards but they probably won’t v.v

Maybe some of the toys Tixx drops off will be the activities though

Fort Aspenwood’s a pretty cool guy. eh fights for first place and doesn’t afraid of anything.

Image related.

Usagi.4835:

I don’t think there actually is a formal alliance, Derv. Are you sure it’s not all in your head?

I mean, you were bashing your ahead against TCBL for at least 3hrs before you managed to take something besides a camp.

That something happened to be a fully upgraded Hills keep >_> I’d say 3 hours is worth it, lol

Every time I reload the page a PM dialogue is on, it reposts that last thing I replied with and is severely annoying.

TruNoobie.4983:

I write this as a disgruntled member of Fort Aspenwood and the guild [PRO]:

The past few weeks became increasingly irritating because Yak’s Bend was repeatedly choosing to fight us rather than TC. All this served to do was secure victory for TC and incite our retaliation. With them being dropped a tier and CD being bumped up for the week, the potential for change was there. Sadly, it appears that we’ve become the new YB. Rather than attempting to challenge TC, we instead have chosen another week of futility.

The most disturbing part however isn’t the result, but rather…

Wow, o.o… How you managed to express all that concisely and not go over the posting limit is a skill I will never possess.

But yeah, that’s pretty much exactly what I and the leadership of my guild would agree on. This kind of stuff has costed us an assault on Hills keep in TC BL, where CD pulled out completely after their keep on their own BL was taken (by us) and TC focused us and kicked us out of their BL.

Phantom.8130:

Kasei.8726:

Phantom.8130:

you don’t get it….. we want a challenge, but we don’t want to have to regress to get it. we don’t want to make laughable tactical blunders, we want to move toward perfection.

“So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong and to strike at what is weak.” – Sun Tzu

i’m sorry if you don’t agree with that, but you can’t possibly think you know better than the guy who literally wrote the book on warfare. if you try to argue against it, you will lose every single time and you will end up looking like an arrogant fool while doing so.

war is a very cerebral thing. if you try to lead with your manhood, it’s going to get chopped off. instead you have to pick the most opportune target, and take advantage of it. those who beat their heads against rocks expecting the rock to split before their skull will only end up with a massive headache.

Your references to war are irrelevant since this isn’t a war. If you try to argue that WvW is equivalent to war “you will lose every single time and you will end up looking like an arrogant fool while doing so.”

“we want a challenge, but we don’t want to have to regress to get it”

And that’s where we differ. My goal in this game is to have fun, challenging battles. If my server happens to win the match through those battles, all the better. For example, I don’t even play the weeks when my server dominates all the maps, because it isn’t a challenge: it isn’t fun. If my server happens to be holding a map well, then I will specifically seek out an outmanned borderlands to play on for a challenge. From what you guys have posted (not necessarily the entire server), you do not. If you call that regressing or bad tactics, then there’s nothing left for me to say.

My point is simple: It’s fine if you care about points first, but go out and seek a challenge before you complain about the lack of one. Not to go off-topic, but it reminds me of those players who complained about the lack of content in the game, when they hadn’t even visited all the maps yet.

I will have shoddy internet for the next week or so. So you guys will have fun without me, later.

the consequences may not be nearly as severe, but the tactics and strategies still apply. if you don’t accept that, you will never stand a chance against us. we will forever be your glass ceiling. if you’re looking for fun, challenging battles without warlike strategies, it sounds as though what you’re looking for is sPvP or tPvP. not WvW. while they both can have fun, challenging battles, the strategies involved are different. what may work in one won’t necessarily work in the other. you can accept it and improve, or you can deny it and watch as your WvW population dwindles until you find yourself back down in tier 4. it’s your call.

The amount of hubris displayed in this post is irritating. You also didn’t address why he was responding, which was that you initially stated Fort Aspenwood is not a challenge and that you were discontent because of it. If that is so, then go to Yak’s Bend borderlands where there is a challenge. But if you’re not willing to do that much, don’t mention “wanting a challenge” at all because it’s evident that you’re only seeking to boast how many points your server puts up at the end of the week.

We know what it takes to improve as a server WvW contender and trust me, we are trying. But to use the analogy of war puts an unnecessary and largely irrelevant emphasis on what people are trying to get out of this game. To many people, it’s first and foremost about fun. Not to say that TC is not doing so as well, but if you aren’t having fun then what is the point of playing the game?

That may be our only hope of staying in the tier, but a lot of people on FA aren’t complacent hitting an inferior server over and over. And especially coming into this matchup where we had clearly established superiority over Yak’s bend throughout the second half of the week almost closing a 120k point gap in 4 days in our last matchup; we were gunning for Tarnished Coast because they were #1.

I don’t believe Fort Aspenwood should have concerned itself with Yak’s bends fight for second strategy because that would only have cemented our place as the underdogs in the fight with TC. Now it’s not as competitive as a match up as it was in the first week because of transfers and lower server morale as a whole, but if we do get kicked down to Tier 4, that’ll give us the breathing room to re-evaluate our forces and coordination so we can come back and kick your guyses butts next round we face ya’ >:D

Likewise… but at least we got that wall fortified first! Haha, that was an amazing time fighting TC out there while our wall was down and we were trying to get that upgrade.

phaneo.4597:

What eventually happened at Bay on TCBL? I had to rush for work as I was getting late and just logged off after making sure our Hills keep was fully repaired and sieged.

Earlier before that, I was there watching ULTD’s movements from our Citadel spawn area and reporting them on /team chat. Most of us were tied up at BB after the initial assault by [GODS] and running supplies to repair. I noticed orange swords at Hills south gate, and remembered someone mention “where did all [GODS] go?” and I knew that’s where they are. Headed there by running and saw 20+ [GODS] banging on the gate (which was almost at 30%) by the time I reached. Good strategy there.
While I saw [ULTD] moving randomly to east and west from TP, I was expecting them at Bay to split our forces, but instead they showed up at Hills inner (which I presume is a strategy to completely divert all our forces over there, while some of them make a move on Bay keep). We eventually got our forces move to Bay, while some of us stayed back at Hills to repair the damage. Now I’m curious as to how did the Bay situation end?

ULTD and GODS coordinated forces took Bay after a hard fought battle extending over about an hour 1/2 to 2 hours. Was amazingly fun.

ULTD and GODS siege on Tarnished Coast Borderland Bay Keep was amazingly fun. Thanks everyone who participated for a great time, TC included! :-)

I just had an amazingly fun 1v1 with a TC thief between Garrison and Bay on TCBL. It went for like 7 full minutes.That was a heck of a lot of fun and I salute you if you are reading this!

That is freaky man, how’d this happen? lol

Seriously guys, can we get back to talking about the match up? We don’t need people weighing in their opinion on the specific qualities of the guild or calling out certain people. This’ll only lead to another locked thread.

Can we get back to discussing the numerous good fights or fun incidents that have happened? I don’t think I’ve heard enough of these Golems honestly. I wasn’t there so I want details! :O

SeanLLewellyn.2807:

I’m on Tarnished Coast, unguilded, and would just like to say: Welcome, GODS members who have decided to join us. You have your reasons, we have a (generally) supportive, positive community, and so long as ANET allows free transfers, each and every server will have the chance to host some wandering players. Really, I don’t see the reason for any drama.

Although I can understand if FA feels a bit … bereft?

You taught me a new word today lol…

But we’ll get by :P We’ve still got plenty of talent here on FA

GregT.4702:

I have to say that if they’re just going to be PvP-esque stuff similar to Keg Brawl I’d prefer them not to bother. I already barely touch the main PvP content, and that’s all way better implemented than Keg Brawl.

But they could certainly explore some other types of gameplay. Collaborative music making sounds awesome, Polymock could be kinda fun if it works off our existing mini collections rather than requiring us to collect something new. Other types of non PvP group play could really be exciting.

I doubt Bar Brawl’s still in the works, though. It sounds like they took the basic mechanics of the concept and turned it into Costume Brawl, which was a better idea anyway as it adds functionality to existing content, and you can play it anywhere.

Idk, Bar Brawl would add a lot of personal flavor to Divinity’s Reach. It’s less about brawling and more about being a bar brawl where you’re using tables, chairs and ale mugs to bash over people’s heads and drinking different beverages for buffs, etc. It’s supposed to help foster social communities in the game.

Imagine groups of players hanging out daily outside the flagon actually treating it like a rambunctious pub just talking and making new friends. I think that’s the kind of stuff ArenaNet intended for their cities. There’s nothing wrong with occasionally using MMO’s for a tricked out chat room. :-)

Hopefully those toys include delivering activities to the game! Those cities can use some life. Check out my sig if you want to see more on activities that they might add with this new content… maybe…

This is troubling. I’m not sure how I missed this quote people keep referencing by Mike O’Brien from 2011, but I was certain they wouldn’t increase the level cap. It;s even more disturbing watching people fail horribly at trying to understand what fans of lateral progression want and why…

This probably also means that they’re abandoning a lot of their emphasis on aesthetic gear choices. Less of the game most likely will actually be about having fun. It’s an inherent part of catering to the VP reward crowd. You’re not designing the game around fun content, you’re designing it around carrots. And no matter how many carrots this crowd eats, they won’t see that they’ve been running in place for several years.

This makes my hopes for seeing things like the activities that were supposed to be in at launch much, much lower. After all, why should they provide fun content when there’s a new audience of people who are more content chasing artificial rewards in the form of numbers. It makes no sense to me, but you can’t teach people to have higher standards.

When Keg Brawl and WvW stop being fun for me, I’m through with this game. They’re no longer my favorite game development studio. :/

If it’s bugged because the brigade of NPC’s stopped moving, we fixed that on FA a couple times by drawing a champion mob over there to kill them. Some of these things are fixable.

Zaxares.5419:

It’s a fairly simple matter to make activities like Keg Brawl popular. ANet just needs to give it Karma and Glory as a reward, making it an alternative for PvP’ers or and PvE’ers alike to gain a currency they want.

I hadn’t noticed a lot of those activities the OP found though, only the major ones like the Busted Flagon bar brawl, the Shooting Range, Polymock and the Moa Races and Pet Arena in LA.

Idk, I disagree. Mainly on the glory part because that allows them access to PvP armor without actually PvP’ing.

They should be able to get exclusive aesthetic skins and items for playing and excelling at these games as well as host leaderboards for these things liek bonus missions in GW1.

Please refer to my signature for a detailed list of the known visible Activities in the game.