Guild Wars 2

I agree with the OP. While I’m happy that the folks in China get a chance to get these items, I’m still a bit disappointed that having Molten gloves or the Gas Mask no longer means you were there.

neonreaper said it best: it’s a memento of sorts.

If somebody showed me a chunk of the Berlin Wall, I’d be impressed! If they told me they got it from a flea market in California, I’d be much less impressed.

JustTrogdor.7892:

timmyf.1490:

I don’t see anything wrong with Lankybrit’s statements.

Just because you think the QD train was a bad thing in the game doesn’t mean you’re somehow bad for doing it. I think that adding Ascended gear was bad, but I’m still getting it for my characters.

It’s about the inconsistency. “People shouldn’t do trains they should do x,y,z.” Yet he does the train.

That’s not what Lankybrit is saying. Or at least it’s not what I’m saying.

If the train exists, I understand people will do it. Fine.

What we’ve asked is that *ArenaNet remove the train in some manner*. Those are different. I’m not blaming players for doing the super easy very rewarding content. It’s super easy and very rewarding, why wouldn’t you? (imho it’s BORING so I only did it a bit.)

But it’s also disruptive, teaches players bad habits, and presents a bad face for the game. So we had wanted it changed or removed or something.

I don’t see anything wrong with Lankybrit’s statements.

Just because you think the QD train was a bad thing in the game doesn’t mean you’re somehow bad for doing it. I think that adding Ascended gear was bad, but I’m still getting it for my characters.

JustTrogdor.7892:

Lankybrit.4598:

Champ trains should never have been a way to level up. Good riddance to the low level champion trains if that’s how people were using them.

Yes because people should level up their 3rd, 4th, 5th or whatever alt the way you think they should right? And out of curiosity how do you suggest people level alts? What way is acceptable to you?

I have 7 80s and have done champ train for maybe 3 or 4 hours total. Leveling alts is easy-peasy in GW2. You just play the content and you level.

Ronah Lynda.2496:

A-nets wants us to play the event more times and they trick us with achievements and this is the reason many people play QP now. They should make the event fun to play or at least rewarding so we play it more times becasue we “want” to not because we “need” to

I have many problems with the way ArenaNet handles achievements and made a long, (I like to think) thoughtful post about it. You can read that here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Herding-Cats-in-the-Living-World

That said, the achievements exist for people who put in the effort to get them. If you only want to do the event ONE SINGLE TIME, do you really think you deserve to get all the achievements?

Vesuvius, if you look at the post history of those complaining loudest about the QD train’s death, you’ll see they haven’t been particularly active here. At least not in posting.

So it’s entirely possible they never saw how much and how long we begged for them to kill it.

Ronah Lynda.2496:

If there are only 5 people doing an event, fine, let it be, but if there are 100 people doing it, why try to split them up instead of making the event scale up accordingly and not only increasing the foes life bar?

That’s a really good question! Reasons you might not want 100 people at a boss:

1) People with low-performing computers have awful framerates
2) Lots of graphical effects make it hard to see a boss and its tells, leading to rather boring gameplay – remember, GW2 is supposed to have “action combat”
3) Condition caps mean that players with condition builds are nearly useless
4) Not only can you not see the boss, but you can’t even really see other players! Smaller groups make it more likely that you’ll eventually notice the same people playing with you. (This requires megaserver to improve its placement of players in servers, so it may not be a factor yet.)
5) Each player feels less of an impact on the boss – doing 5% of the total damage feels like I’m doing more than doing 1% of the total damage.

Here’s a question for you: what is BETTER about 100 players attacking a single boss than 20 players attacking each of five bosses? Or 17 players attacking each of six bosses?

Ronah Lynda.2496:

timmyf.1490:

Megaserver and this event are designed to go together. People just aren’t doing it correctly.

When QD train was “derailed” by some new player who didn’t know the rotation we heard the same People just aren’t doing it correctly all over the map chat.
All these players who “imposed” the rules were pointed out as anti-social and jerks
Now, if A-net wants us to " play by the rules" because People just aren’t doing it correctly it seem very social and cheerful

I was never a fan of the Queensdale train precisely because of the toxicity it created. I never agreed with those rules.

That said: do you dispute that splitting into 6 groups and killing all 6 bosses is the “right way” to do Boss Blitz? Or are you disagreeing with me for some other reason?

Sinope.5630:

So you think that there is not any inconsistency, between the headline and OP’s post. I see that he has made most negative headline to his post and then talking things different subject.

Headlines can only be 40 characters long. 40 characters is often not enough to completely express your opinion.

The opinion of the original post is clear. Your response had little-to-nothing to do with the actual post. You made up your own conclusion based on the headline and made it a joke.

That’s the last I have to say about it.

Ronah Lynda.2496:

timmyf.1490:

The OP clearly states that he likes that the change requires a MEDIUM number of people – a large group split up into smaller groups.

Unlike, as you suggested repeatedly, absolutely no grouping at all.

MEDIUM and MEGASERVERS don’t fit in the same shoes like MEDIUM and GUESTING didn’t fit either.

100 people per map =/= 100 people stacked on a tag. That is a zerg.

100 people per map split into 6 groups = 18 on a boss. That is not a zerg. Or it’s a small zerg anyhow.

Realistically, you have more like 90 on a map and 15-20 doing Gauntlet. So it’s 70-75. Split 6 ways, 12 per boss. Which is about what you want.

Megaserver and this event are designed to go together. People just aren’t doing it correctly.

Sinope.5630:

The headline of this thread is “Cheers for anti-zerg philosophy”

I just made a list what this headline means in a game, and if ArenaNet would do like headline says.

If you, timmyf, don’t know what anti- word means it is against something. So that who made this headline is cheering for anti-zerg philosophy, he is cheering for against zerg philosophy. And if ArenaNet really takes that headline seriously and make this game totally anti-zerg game, all those what I have been listing in there are really going to happen.

Your examples are against of anti-zerg philosophy too, anti-zerg means not zerg at all good zergs or bad zergs, what means in the game should not be organized zerg, not anything what might affect zerg behaviour or what is tempting to make zerg in a game.

But I can not help, timmyf, if you don’t understand what anti-zerg philosophy really means.

Well, if we are looking for a definition for “anti-zerg philosophy” AS INTENDED BY THE ORIGINAL POSTER, perhaps we could read his post, rather than just the headline.

Faerun.3091:

Last year was awfull for me, there was no gameplay to be had there, it was just running around in a big zerg and spamming #1 skill. It was no fun. This time we need to split the zerg in medium size groups, and this time player skills matter more. So thank you for that, I really like the change, and I hope more of this will come, like marionete fights etc… Just make sure that you make events that scales well for medium number of people as well as for huge number.

The OP clearly states that he likes that the change requires a MEDIUM number of people – a large group split up into smaller groups.

Unlike, as you suggested repeatedly, absolutely no grouping at all.

You don’t get this choice.

UI Designers shouldn’t be building boss encounters. Server coders shouldn’t be doing art assets. Artists shouldn’t be optimizing the graphics engine.

ArenaNet has programmers writing code and they’ll release feature packs occasionally. The contest designers are designing content and they’ll release it as LS2.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

timmyf.1490:

I’d say the majority of players are doing what they’ve always done: flocking to the Blue Dorito, autoattacking while doing other things on a second monitor, and expecting a huge reward.

Oh, and ignoring mapchat completely.

In all fairness, last night I was stuck in an instance with dozens of people who spoke a language I could not identify. Due to the new server system, we no longer find ourselves with players of the same language.

I might as well have been with players speaking a different language. Of the 40+ people participating, I’d get responses from maybe 1 or 2. (Not counting my 3 guildmates who were working with me.)

Unwillingness to communicate seems to be widespread within the GW2 playerbase. That, plus ArenaNet’s insistence on creating events which require communication, is leading to major issues.

Curious whether we’ll just have to keep banging our heads against the wall or if Anet’s strategy will change.

Sinope.5630:

Because of this anti-zerg philosophy Arenanet should do like this in the game:

1. All goup events should be removed from the game. It might make players to feel tempted to zerging. That is really bad thing and it is against of anti-zerg philosophy.

2. All Meta events should be removed from the game, Teq and 3 Wurms. It totally makes players to zerg. Even it is organized zerg, but it is zerg anyways. It is against of anti-Zerg philosophy.

3. WvW and EotM should be removed from the game, it is zerging area, definetly huge zerg area. Yes this activity is totally against of anti-zerg philosophy.

4. All events should be removed from this game. They are gathering little zergs to specific area, and it is tempting to players to zerg. It is against anti-zerg philosophy too.

5. All champions from this game should be change to veterans, in everywhere. Champions attract more players and makes them zerg. And it is against anti-zerg philosophy.

6. Living Story should be removed from this game, it makes players to zerg and do things together. It is against anti-zerg philosophy

So how ArenaNet should change their game that it is not against anti-zerg philosophy. They should make it single player game. Then the zerg would never happens and anti-zerg philosophy is finally working

Yes ArenaNet, make this game Single Player MMO, then anti-zerg philosophy will work fine And everybody in this game would be happy. No more zergs anywhere. What a peace.

Hyperbole at its finest.

Let’s instead talk about good zergs and bad zergs.

GOOD ZERG: “Okay, guys, there’s three objectives, so let’s put ourselves into three groups based on who can best handle those three objectives while also balancing how many people go to each.”

BAD ZERG: “EVERYBODY IN MAP ON COMMANDER NOW NOW NOW NOW”

We could maybe make an exception for coordinated WvW as certain objectives really do require a map blob. In PvE, though, if the goal is for everybody to follow the Blue Dorito, that’s bad event design.

Unloveableone.6082:

How does it not work? I think it amazing.
5 other Commanders and I just organized and progressed all the way up to 30 seconds off of Gold. It isn’t hard.
Just don’t be lazy and command better.
It’s a step in the right direction compared to last years follow the Dorito and zerg type of thing.
I love the Pavilion this time around.
Just stop expecting to get everything handed to you without working for it.

I tried a couple times. Everybody zerged on one tag anyway. We couldn’t get 6 people to tag up.

I even tried – for the entire time between two runs – to get a group of 10-12 to join me on TS to do Boom Boom. Not a single person responded to me.

I’m giving up for a few days and hopefully people will learn the event.

Serelisk.6573:

It’s not hundreds, it’s closer to 60-70. And it’s not hard. It actually requires a very basic level of communication. No specialized builds needed (though having a couple people who know how to use reflect helps a lot).

The problem is that people would rather complain on forums about how their loot was nerfed than cooperating with the people around them to claim their EASY 8 champ bags every 15-20 minutes or so.

I’d say the majority of players are doing what they’ve always done: flocking to the Blue Dorito, autoattacking while doing other things on a second monitor, and expecting a huge reward.

Oh, and ignoring mapchat completely.

CuteLilKittenHugz.2064:

p.s. basing your view of the majority’s opinions on these forums or reddit is going to give you a wrong conclusion. If you’ve actually spent time playing the game, you might notice a vast number of people enjoy zerging up for champ trains. Never heard one person in game EVER say “man this champ train sucks”. But you will hear TONS of people asking where the train is. Did you get 1+1 or do I need to spell that out for you too?

1,784 hours over 634 days. I am, admittedly, relatively casual.

No need for all the hostility, though.

And I know plenty of people who hate the champ train and can only stand doing it because they’re watching TV at the same time or something.

wingofbenu.4316:

timmyf.1490:

The Queen’s Pavilion will be great once all the people who came to zerg up, mash 1, and collect tons of loot leave.

it’ll be great. But only for those people with a large enough guild to coordinate it to any decent degree. if you’re a solo or small guild player, just plain dont bother.

I’m a small guild leader. I ADAMANTLY refuse to join TTS, etc. I can coordinate with anybody who wishes to coordinate.

CuteLilKittenHugz.2064:

Well said gentlemen. THIS IS HOW THE MAJORITY OF YOUR PLAYERS FEEL ANET.

ZERG = FUN.
ACTUAL LOOT = FUN.

Only weirdos prefer to play a MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER Online game in small packs and boo and hiss should – God forbid – a MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER crowd form.

I think you should avoid speaking for the majority of players based on forum comments. If you go read Reddit, for example, the response is overwhelmingly positive.

Also. That you think Massively Multiplayer is the same as Zerg is a little troubling.

I’m hearing 7 minutes for gold reward of 8 champ bags plus 3 greens+. That seems reasonable.

It’s just not going to happen if people zerg.

I don’t think “you can play your way” means things should be equally rewarding. I think the harder the content, the more rewarding it should be.

(That’s obviously not the case in GW2…)

Harper.4173:

So who exactly is this event for now ?

I get the feeling this is built to train players how to PUG their way to success in upcoming LW content.

If so, this is a bad omen.

Valento.9852:

I love SAB puzzles… that’s why I want it back, that’s the kind of content I personally like and it’s somehow rewarding (even repeating it wasn’t all that bad because it’s kitten hilarious!).

Oh totally. I loved SAB World 1. I was really busy with real life when World 2 came out and I never had a chance to play it. I was so bummed.

Valento.9852:

Soloing a dungeon is not an option, it’s 5-man content, but I agree with the others.

Thanks! I’d say a majority of people don’t 5-man Arah explorable either. ;-)

Different people find fun in different types of content. Living World content doesn’t appeal to everybody all the time. That’s okay!

If you want super-rewarding yet not-at-all-challenging content, I’m not sure I’m going to feel all that bad for you.

Ashen.2907:

timmyf.1490:

Look, we’ve seen the Eurogamer interview a million times. THEY CHANGED THEIR MIND.

I don’t like it myself: I have zero interest in getting Ascended armor. I’ve got most of my toons up to Ascended weapons, though. At least the ones that I care about.

That said, none of the content in the game is gated in a way that requires Ascended gear. That’s the big difference. Yes, you can be a little more powerful. Yes, it makes the content a little easier and a little faster. But the only gear you need is Exotic. In fact, probably even Rare.

Now, if they start releasing 5-man content that requires everybody to be in full Ascended, I’ll be up in arms with the rest of you guys.

I think that this is subjective. The game is not enjoyable for me without BiS gear. All content is gated in such a was to require Ascended gear, for me. Then again I am willing to wait and see if they add alternate methods of acquisition or the ability to trade for BiS.

Perhaps we could find a common language? Where other MMOs use hard-gates that absolutely require BiS gear to complete new content, GW2 uses a soft-gate which encourages and promotes but does not require BiS gear?

I must give you respect for recognizing this as a personal requirement, though. I hate to speak for others, but I’d say the vast majority of the playerbase does not consider their character unusable or diminished because they only have full Exotic.

But again, I could be terribly wrong about that.

Look, we’ve seen the Eurogamer interview a million times. THEY CHANGED THEIR MIND.

I don’t like it myself: I have zero interest in getting Ascended armor. I’ve got most of my toons up to Ascended weapons, though. At least the ones that I care about.

That said, none of the content in the game is gated in a way that requires Ascended gear. That’s the big difference. Yes, you can be a little more powerful. Yes, it makes the content a little easier and a little faster. But the only gear you need is Exotic. In fact, probably even Rare.

Now, if they start releasing 5-man content that requires everybody to be in full Ascended, I’ll be up in arms with the rest of you guys.

crazy.9083:

timmyf.1490:

Sunshine.4680:

Kalendraf.9521:

Lishtenbird.2814:

So, paying 50s-1g to get back 50s-1g after 30 minutes of frustrating fighting with zerg-minded people who cannot read boss description is fun?

Okay…

Only 30 minutes? Consider yourself very lucky. I was in an instance last night that took over 90 minutes to finish a blitz, and it wasn’t due to people simply not understanding the mechanics.

Don’t tell timmy that, it seems where he is from they do it in less then 8 minutes with everyone getting their chevos etc.. it must be the land of milk and honey where the streets are paved with gold and people only die from old age surrounded by loved ones.

I never said that! Mine took about 45 minutes. I spent much of that time trying to get people not to zerg and was told repeatedly to shove it up my kitten.

I’m just saying that once all the people who showed up to farm figure out that farming isn’t an option, they’ll leave. The remaining people will trend more toward caring about completing the event and will have more success.

And you don’t see a problem for the game in that? An event where, let’s be honest about it, the MAJORITY of people leave after realizing what it is?

A minority of people do 40+ Fractals.
A minority of people solo Arah explorable paths.
A minority of people play T1 WvW.
A minority of people are max-rank PvP.
A minority of people have read all 3 GW novels and care deeply about the lore.
A minority of people have Ascended armor and/or care to get it.

Just because content is not built for the majority of the game does not make it bad content.

I’m not saying Boss Blitz is good content – I think it’s okay, not great – but saying that most people don’t want to do it is not the same thing as saying it’s bad.

Here in the United States, Bud Light is by far the most popular beer. I don’t consider it good beer. I certainly would never choose to drink it. I consider it inferior.

Tastes vary. Goals vary.

Morrigan.2809:

Brother Grimm.5176:

Yes, because the point of this game is to farm gold…..good luck to you.

So just curious
what is your goal in game?
( and don’t answer fun unless you want to be very specific about what you consider fun)
do you need the TP for that?
mmmm

I can’t answer for Grimm, but I can answer for myself! My goal is a couple parts:

1) To have fun!

1a) I enjoy lore. Not to a huge extent, but I’m always up for learning more about the world. The Living Story has been a bit of a disappointment in this respect, but I do very much like the biconics. I’m a total sap for Kasjory, so I could (and do) sit around and listen to them chat to each other.

1b) I like fast-paced mid-tier difficulty content. I enjoy the combat when I have to do more than auto-attack. I do not enjoy spending 30-45 minutes “preparing” for fights. Examples of content I like are most of the explorable dungeon paths, Fractals in the 11-19 range, certain LW content. I have not yet enjoyed Tequatl or the Three-Headed Wurm as I find the long prep time to be horrifically boring. I play about 3 hours/night and 45 minutes of standing does not equal fun to me.

1c) I enjoy socializing with my guildmates and, occasionally, other people. We’re usually on Teamspeak yapping about something. I’m – I’ll admit it – usually drinking bourbon. We’re a small guild – 5-15 active per night – so we know each other on a pretty personal level. Most of us consist of unmarried couples in their 20s or 30s.

1d) I enjoy accomplishing mid-term goals. I try to give myself goals and subdivide them. Right now, for example, I’m trying to get all my crafting to 500. I’m at 4/6 with the other two at 473 and 478. Since I also enjoy longer-term goals, I’m trying to do this at as low of a gold-cost as possible, I’m trying to get inscriptions/insignias from dungeon armor salvages. That’s my current slow spot. I probably run 2 or 3 dungeon paths per day on average, so this can be a long process. (Some days I’ll run 8 paths. Many days I’ll run 0.)

1e) I enjoy accomplishing long-term goals. Back during the Marionette release, I got my first Legendary, the Moot! I’m not a huge fan of farming or grinding, so this was a Pretty Big Deal for me. Right now I’m also working toward #2 – either Bolt (stretch goal) or the Minstrel (more realistic goal). I figure I’ll toss a few dozen rare Swords per month in the MF and hope I get Zap while working on common components for both Legendaries. If I don’t get Zap by the time I finish my Gift of Fortune, I’ll probably just switch to Minstrel.

Ionut.2307:

Azhure.1857:

Ionut.2307:

Now let’s wait for that white knight posting that we shouldn’t play for reward.

One should always play for some kind of reward. Just maybe that reward doesn’t always need to be $$$. Mmkay?

Absolutely agree with you.
But for this particular encounter, which is it?
Is it an engrossing story?
Is it amazing combat?

Besides “insert AP checklist here”, what reward this encounter does provide?

I actually find the encounter mechanics fun. (Some of them, not all of them.) We were lol’ing pretty kitten Teamspeak about the retaliation birds.

I thought “play the way you want” just meant that there were multiple ways to get what you want. Want to level in WvW? Go for it! Want to grind out mats for your Legendary? You sure can! Prefer to just buy them off the TP? That’s valid too!

The idea was to give us options and freedom and multiple paths.

It was not to say that every option is allowed. Or encouraged. Or profitable. Or balanced.

viralthefrog.6130:

People make playing the TP seem like such a tremendous feat.
I play 2-3 hours a day, sometimes. Usually less.
I can play that TP like no other. It’s really simple. People just talk it up and make it seem harder than it is.
I have no problem with the loot system, either.
I do participate in the EotM train, though. Easy karma, gold, and leveling. Plus the salvage loot nets a good income from the TP.

2-3 hours a day is about all I have for GW2. If I spent that much time playing the TP, I’d never do anything else.

Arikyali.5804:

When I need gold, I’ll play the market.

Well there you go. ;-)

Most of us don’t have the time/interest/skill to do so. Myself included. It’s a bit harder of a climb then.

KarateKid.5648:

When the 1 pushers leave, who’s going to make up those sub teams? Better idea than snarking about people leaving is to communicate to them the strategy and that the event can be rewarding (though I still argue not rewarding enough for even the smaller time investment described) so at least they see the difference.

Note: that was primarily for timmy, not Astral.

That’s fair. I was doing a boss last night with 7 or 8 people and we were making decent progress. I’d bet the bosses are scaled to work best for 10-15.

You need 60-90 people, then, to complete the event. That is a big number. My hope is that Megaservers will continue to provide that many players for the event, but it remains to be seen.

Still, I’d rather have autoattackers in Cleric’s gear who can split themselves into 6 groups than full Ascended Zerkers who insist on zerging.

I see three options:

1) Try to teach people the event. WHICH I DID. Then I get people – for example, Sunshine, sorry to pick on you – who tell me I’m an elitist holier-than-thou player who won’t let them play like they want.

2) Do the event slowly and painfully. WHICH I DID once nobody cared to do the event in the obvious manner it should be done.

3) Just skip the event altogether until people figure it out. This is probably what I’ll end up doing after a couple more days of trying.

Astral Projections.7320:

Why should you expect these people to listen to you? Some random person in the group, telling Commanders to tag down or your other instructions. They don’t know you from Adam. Don’t know if you are reliable, know what you are talking about or if you are trolling. It’s rather arrogant to be telling strangers how to do something totally different from the way it was the last time and then expecting them to obey.

I don’t “expect” people to listen to me. I made my case for why I thought it was the right strategy. The basic response was “who cares?”

Not “you’re wrong, do it this way.” Just… “whatever.”

I maintain that splitting into 6 roughly equal groups is the right strategy. If you disagree, I’d be happy to consider your alternate strategy.

Astral Projections.7320:

People are mashed together from many servers. This is a particular problem with the EU servers where not only are there multiple languages but the ability to see chat of other languages has been disabled. For example, if someone is giving instructions in English and other people have non English as the set up language then the instructions don’t even show up in their chat. How do you expect these people to follow your directions if your directions don’t even show up in chat? ANet is at fault.

This is also a problem on the NA servers where language are much less of an issue. The problem isn’t language, or it’s at least not entirely language.

Astral Projections.7320:

People showed up for the Queens Pavillion. Was there an NPC saying, “ok here’s the new rules” or “everyone split up into 6 equal groups”? No. It doesn’t. ANet is at fault.

Your post that I quoted made no mention of any problems that ANet may have caused or acerbated. It was only expressing that it will be great once these people leave.

You can’t assume that any single forum post contains a full explanation of everything I believe in the world to be true. Just because I do not explicitly state in EACH POST that ArenaNet does things wrong does not mean I think they do everything correctly.

You know what happens when you assume, right?

As far as splitting into 6 equal groups, they make it completely obvious if you read the text in the event dialogue.

When bosses are killed, their special buffs will be given to other bosses. Making them harder.

So: you try to kill them at the same time instead of one at a time.

Sure, not all players have the cunning strategic mind to figure out such a challenging puzzle mechanic. My suggestion to them would be to follow others who seem to know how to do the event.

The problem is that I also see lots of people arguing this:

1) We’re tired of doing the same thing over and over!
2) Why did you change Pavilion!?! It should be exactly the same as last year!

Let’s say every successful completion of Boss Blitz offered… 10g for Bronze Reward Level, 25g for Silver Reward Level, Ascended box for Gold Reward Level. Guaranteed.

How many would be complaining about the change? Zero.

How many would be complaining that you can’t just zerg around? Zero.

How many would be complaining that the event doesn’t have obvious enough goals? Zero.

There are many issues with the way this event has been built. Sadly, the player satisfaction for an event is so highly tied to rewards, that can make the discussion of the underlying content or systems very challenging.

Astral Projections.7320:

To the people that way the players are doing it wrong. I stole this quote from a poster named Pifil as I thought it very relevant.

“Yep, it’s always the players fault, never ArenaNet’s for not actually communicating the change in direction or putting any effort into “retraining” the players in those changes or giving them tools to better organise themselves in the multi-lingual, multi-server mush that the megaserver system created.”

Yes. I agree that ArenaNet needs to do a better job of teaching players HOW to play these events. I even created a very long post about it. Look for the “Herding Cats” post.

That said, players share some of the responsibility. The information is there. Players are trying to explain in mapchat. The tooltips offer plenty of guidance.

This isn’t a megaserver problem as this exact problem existed with Marionette. Or the Holo-knights. Or Tequatl. Or the Three-Headed Wurm. Language barriers certainly make this more difficult, but that’s not something completely new.

Sunshine.4680:

timmyf.1490:

Ionut.2307:

Astral Projections.7320:

timmyf.1490:

The Queen’s Pavilion will be great once all the people who came to zerg up, mash 1, and collect tons of loot leave.

I haven’t done the Queen’s Pavilion yet. Everyone says the loot is very meager. After people have gotten the Living Story achieves what will keep them coming back and playing there? What will keep it full so that the late comers to this can also get their achieves? Are the boss fights so fun and rewarding that people are going to keep returning for that? What will be so great about it after so many have left?

Absolutely nothing.
Now let’s wait for that white knight posting that we shouldn’t play for reward.

The rewards will be much better when the players doing the content are better. 45m for 2 champ bags and a green is obviously terrible. But if you can get the, what, 8 for gold? In less than 8 minutes? That’s much better.

The problem right now is that the player base is doing it wrong.

The problem is that there is no winning unless you beat it with people who know what they’re doing and without people chevo hunting. Except it’s often people like your ilk who yell at people trying to help to go away and then have the gall to call out people who do then come back to tag to get credit because that’s all they did is tag. So really what are people supposed to do when it’s filled or need chevos?

I don’t yell at people who are trying to help to go away. I did ask the Commander who was tagged up to tag down because he was creating a zerg. He did not. I told people to split up and attack the bosses at the same time. They did not.

So I went and attacked bosses with a small group of people who seemed to recognize that I had the right strategy. Killed them. Then went and did other things.

Zerging is a FAILING STRATEGY in all aspects. You don’t get more loot. You don’t get more rewards. In fact, it takes LONGER and gives LESS REWARDS.

Once the I-don’t-care-I’m-just-going-to-follow-the-dorito players leave, the event will be easier to complete, faster to complete, and give better rewards. Period.

Sunshine.4680:

Kalendraf.9521:

Lishtenbird.2814:

So, paying 50s-1g to get back 50s-1g after 30 minutes of frustrating fighting with zerg-minded people who cannot read boss description is fun?

Okay…

Only 30 minutes? Consider yourself very lucky. I was in an instance last night that took over 90 minutes to finish a blitz, and it wasn’t due to people simply not understanding the mechanics.

Don’t tell timmy that, it seems where he is from they do it in less then 8 minutes with everyone getting their chevos etc.. it must be the land of milk and honey where the streets are paved with gold and people only die from old age surrounded by loved ones.

I never said that! Mine took about 45 minutes. I spent much of that time trying to get people not to zerg and was told repeatedly to shove it up my kitten.

I’m just saying that once all the people who showed up to farm figure out that farming isn’t an option, they’ll leave. The remaining people will trend more toward caring about completing the event and will have more success.

Sunshine.4680:

maha.7902:

So you have a choice.

Run Arah p2 in 20 minutes, get 5 champ bags4 boss chests, 3.31g and 26 tokens.

OR

Run the pavilion boss event for 8 minutes, get 6 (?) champ bags and some karma.

6 champ bags? What? Those champions never dropped bags just the reward bag at the end and that has 2 bags in it not 6 and it takes much much longer than 8 minutes.

That’s because you’re getting the Bronze reward because you didn’t do it fast enough.

Ionut.2307:

Astral Projections.7320:

timmyf.1490:

The Queen’s Pavilion will be great once all the people who came to zerg up, mash 1, and collect tons of loot leave.

I haven’t done the Queen’s Pavilion yet. Everyone says the loot is very meager. After people have gotten the Living Story achieves what will keep them coming back and playing there? What will keep it full so that the late comers to this can also get their achieves? Are the boss fights so fun and rewarding that people are going to keep returning for that? What will be so great about it after so many have left?

Absolutely nothing.
Now let’s wait for that white knight posting that we shouldn’t play for reward.

The rewards will be much better when the players doing the content are better. 45m for 2 champ bags and a green is obviously terrible. But if you can get the, what, 8 for gold? In less than 8 minutes? That’s much better.

The problem right now is that the player base is doing it wrong.

The Queen’s Pavilion will be great once all the people who came to zerg up, mash 1, and collect tons of loot leave.

So far, it hasn’t seemed like open world massive encounters have taught players when to use conditions versus direct damage.

• Players still bring zerk gear to fight Tequatl
• You’ll still see people asking why they can’t damage Husks at Triple Wurm
• Need I mention Condition Reflect on the Knights?

I didn’t really specify this well enough in my OP, but what I’m wondering is HOW ArenaNet can start to teach these mechanics to players. Yapping about it in /mapchat obviously isn’t working.

Pavilion is no longer a massive 1-1-1-1-1-1 loot farm.

No hurt done here, Allaraina, though I will admit that these forums often feel like death-from-a-thousand-cuts and I much prefer Reddit for GW2 discussion. Seems like a much happier, more constructive crowd there.

To try to steer things back on topic… the existing world bosses have some interesting ways to try to pull people to the event, but there is still this problem:

They are loot pinatas you can 1-1-1-1-1-1-1 until they die.

Teq and Three-Headed Wurm are better examples. I haven’t tried these in a couple weeks, but my attempts at doing them without a guild coordinating the fight have all been awful.

I wonder if this might help as a model. You can have two different things:

1) Interesting mechanics, like “X takes no damage unless you Y”
2) Coordinating mechanics, like “split equally” or “kill at same time”

Putting those together, though, seems to push the events out of the reach of most uncoordinated (read: non-guild) groups. Does that seem correct?

I’m trying to think of examples where PUG groups routinely manage coordinating mechanics successfully in mass settings. I’m having a hard time coming up with one, so maybe this is the real issue.

They also didn’t listen when people complained that high-level zone map completion shouldn’t be required to get lower level traits.

Hey guys, I get that lots of people want raids, but I was really hoping to just leave that out of this particular thread. There’s a million other places where you can continue to ask for raids.

Lishtenbird.2814:

I would’ve actually preferred if these bosses were simply taken out of this event and put as world bosses in open world – they have nice mechanics for it apart from defiance.

I’ve always felt like the Multiple Dynamic Events in Zone Lead Players To Naturally Group Together and Eventually Challenge World Boss mechanic (as seen best in Ulgoth prior to timers) was always a good way to do this.

The problem is that you need reasons for people to be in the zones in the first place.

I agree, though, I think the fights are fun until the zerg shows up and you have 60 people wailing away on a near-infinite pool of HP.

Allaraina.8614:

Oh my god I’m agreeing with a white knight!

Wat.

I’ve always found that moniker troubling as I have complex, conflicting feelings about much of the game. But try to suggest that Game Developers are people with feelings and we should be respectful when attempting to engage? BEWARE WHITE KNIGHT IGNORE OPINION NOW.

To be fair, I often do this myself in other circumstances. It’s very hard sometimes to recognize when you’re disagreeing with somebody because you actually disagree or whether you’re just tossing them in a stereotype bucket so you can insult them more easily.

Anyway.

I haven’t seen the gold/silver loot, so I don’t know if it’s much better. In the past, though, you’re right, the loot for success was rarely improved enough to justify having to coordinate/do the work. That’s definitely a concern.

In-game tutorials would be incredibly helpful especially for the (not-insignificant) number of people who refuse to read mapchat.

I’m more curious if players have any suggestions for how ArenaNet can better communicate how events work to players and whether properly-aligned incentives will work to drive people to the right goal.

I don’t really want this to be a discussion of whether GW2 should have raids. We’ve had that one before.

If we just accept that ArenaNet wants large open world challenging content, what can they do differently to make that content less painful for people who actually want to complete it?

Hi everybody! Oft-accused White Knight Apologist here to discuss the tension between what players want and what ArenaNet wants for us. This is something that’s bothered me over the last few LW patches and after trying to do Boss Blitz last night, I feel like I’ve got to get this off my chest.

What ArenaNet Wants To Give Us

They haven’t quite said this, but ArenaNet seems to want GW2 “endgame” to be massive open-world content. I’d say they want to give us open-world raids. Difficult fights which require coordination… but in the open world, not in an instance. This has been obvious with megabosses, but other events – Marionette, Scarlet’s Knights/Holos, now Boss Blitz – follow the same pattern.

The problem is that this game had none of these mechanics at launch. They’ve also recognized this and are now trying to “teach” players how to do these events. (I think it was) Josh Foreman talked about this at one point, they are hoping to gradually scale up the difficulty level of these events.

What Players Want

Varies. Many players are chasing loot or chivos. Many players are looking for a challenge. Many players are just looking for a relaxing way to kill a couple hours.

Where I Think the Problem Occurs

I’m not a traditional MMO gamer. In fact, if we don’t count GW1 (because we shouldn’t), GW2 is my first and only MMO. <3 That said, raiding in other MMOs required huge amounts of coordination but worked because everybody had the same goal: kill the boss.

In GW2, players show up to the same events with drastically different goals. Just there for loot? You can AFK in the corner and get the top-end rewards like all the players participating. Want achievements? Hide in the corner where Scarlet’s holo can’t hit you with the gun. Want to kill the boss/complete the event? You’re stuck spending time in mapchat trying to convince people to play the content the “right” way (or perhaps the “coordinated” way) while being ignored/told that they are just “playing the way they want”/told “ArenaNet wouldn’t have done X if they didn’t want me to do Y.”

Inability to Take a Hint

How many of you had people doing Boss Blitz who thought the loot was bugged? Who didn’t realize the goal of Boss Blitz was to kill bosses, not farm mobs?

How many of you had commanders tagged up drawing most of the moths to the blue flame dorito? And 4 or 5 bosses with absolutely nobody?

How many of you, when trying to explain the event in mapchat, were told off by people “playing their way” or “farming” or “getting chivos?”

Pulling in the Same Direction

I understand that game design requires building content for multiple types of gamers, but I am continually astounded that ArenaNet doesn’t build content with this as a strict requirement:

For challenging content which requires coordination, all incentives should point in the same direction: completing the content to achieve the highest reward.

You can still provide reward for failure, but even here you need to be careful. Tequatl’s staged rewards are better than Wurm’s per-head rewards, for example. The Wurm rewards split players who would like to attempt to kill all heads from players who just want to kill one for the “Best Loser” reward.

These events eventually get better. That could be because players “learn” the encounters, but I think it’s because they finally get the achievements and start playing the content as intended. That means that people like myself who are more interested in completing the content than lootz/chivos are stuck headdesking for a couple weeks before we can “play how we want.”

I know this was super long, but PLEASE ArenaNet, if you’re going to give us hard content which requires coordination, don’t also dangle shinies in our peripheral vision.

(And this is an entirely separate topic, but we need better communication/coordination methods as well. Potential idea: Commanders can set a “Players Desired” number and the tag can report that as well as the players in the area. This will greatly ease the process of splitting players between multiple locations like in Marionette and Boss Blitz.)