Mr. Luchador
Member
How do you feel it could have been avoided? I'm aware I say this sitting sweetly with the 8/9pm GMT time here in Europe.
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Guild Wars 2 |OT2| Funding An MMO Entirely On Quaggan Backpacks
- Thread starter Teknopathetic
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How do you feel it could have been avoided? I'm aware I say this sitting sweetly with the 8/9pm GMT time here in Europe.
The same could be said for ANY dungeon/boss/mob run.
Fifty people kill Jormag, a couple of people get some lodestones or exotics or a precursor out of the event, some people just get a bunch of blues and greens. Unless you make it so everybody gets the same rewards then there will always be haves and have-notes.
Zyrusticae
Banned
flyinpiranha
Member
I'm not understanding your point. An MMO is the definition of a divided userbase. It's chance based drops and no matter how many times you may kill a boss you may never get what you want (I killed a boss in WoW for a year straight without getting my sword ... I got it close to after that though)
I understand the frustration of not being able to do the event. That is something that always happens with world events or double XP weekends on console games ... people aren't able to make it and they feel it is unfair.
What I don't understand is your frustration at people receiving drops.
Can you answer me one of my original questions?
Is a person that receives this from a regular boss drop in an instance completely different somehow than somebody who received it on a world event? Why? They both are chances to get it and one is repeatable.
Zyrusticae
Banned
A few points:
1. I don't play MMOs for the loot. I play for social interaction and the unique gameplay elements that can only come from this particular genre (open-world PvP and the like). However, when the loot affects my moment-to-moment gameplay, I have no choice but to care. In this game, that means saving up hundreds of gold to afford certain armor sets (T3 culturals, siiiiiigh).
2. For MMOs that DO have a predominant element of gear grind, I greatly prefer having an actual, attainable goal - abyss, coin, or token gear in Aion, for example, are things I can always work towards even when my luck with the RNG is absolutely, terribly abysmal.
3. I believe that the way precursors are handled is absolutely terrible as-is, even without the event compounding things (it just made it more obvious how bad throwing them out randomly was in the first place). Sure, have them be rare, but not hundreds of gold rare, and at least provide players with alternatives that aren't so random (hence, scavenger hunt and other such ideas).
Hopefully that answers your question.
For posterity: I am going to be negative about something in GW2. -gasp-
I agree that Ascended gear and Agony was handled badly, explained poorly, and as it exists (as I understand it) probably could have been implemented a number of different ways than adding an entirely new tier and creating the perception of a loot grind. ArenaNet should know how reactive MMO communities are and what kind of effect this would have.
Good luck coming up with a catchy nickname for "Retro" without an N in there for "Negativity".
Yep, I was there when he got it. Dropped from Lt. Kohler's chest during a Ghost Eater run. To my knowledge, the only Magic Find he had was an Omnomberry Bar.
Precursors drop in the world, during bosses, from chests. Maybe even moreso now that they have adjusted drop rates across the board and improved dungeon loot. I can't speak for everyone, but running Ghost Eater and CoF1 every night is usually about 45 minutes and nets 3 gold on a bad night. Sometimes a few rares or Cores / Lodestones drop and it's much more. And sometimes some lucky sumabitch gets a precursor from the first boss.
I don't think so. At least the answer seems to be no whenever it's asked.
I really don't think so.
If nobody is on, send an in-game mail to Professor Retro and I will invite you when I get on next. You don't need to be physically logged in to get the invite.
There was a long-standing hack/exploit that was recently removed that pushed a lot of gold into the economy (anyone who saw the 3000g lemon buy order knows what I'm talking about). People had the money to pay the outrageous prices people were putting precursors up for, so the prices stayed high or even rose in some cases. With that artificial gold out of the economy and the drop rate on precursors bumped + this event, prices should go down a tad more.
No, but I thought I'd pre-emptively state the MF situation in this particular instance in case someone wanted to suggest that.
What about people like me who don't care if they lose, as long as they can have their fun?
The case about wanting everyone to win, that's entitlement. That's what causes power creep or bosses getting easy over time. That's what we're talking about on our side of the argument.
Another way to look at it: you pay $60 for a season pass to your favorite sports team or band. This pass allows you to watch all shots of events that are happening on a live online stream, and if you're there you're entered for a free giveaway, just because they like to give to their fans. There are a lot of varying events they hold at times that they can perform and feel they can get the most of their world wide audience to be there for. And people are complaining that this inherent luxury item is screwing them out of free and unnecessary stuff, that's still a random giveaway by definition.
flyinpiranha
Member
But the difference in your issues is that a pre-cursor (and legendaries in general) are really no better stat wise than other exotic weapons.
Granted, I was also surprised at how much of a difference gear made with my survivability
in WvW but the gear isn't that far off, you can't really just "jump right in" as the developers have been touting and I guess my expectations were a bit high on that aspect.
But, with relation to just precursors those are not even remotely required to be competitive. And then you have sPVP which requires no investment.
I agree that they somewhat mislead people with the gear grind, there is one, and with the new ascended or w/e gear ... it looks like it's just going that route which is a whole other discussion in general. But the precursor anger doesn't seem justified to me as I don't even remotely see those as a necessity to being competitive. In fact I'm sure out of the very top WvW players that very few have a legendary.
Mr. Luchador
Member
I honestly didn't think it'd get to you this much, of course perhaps it isn't, but you're sure acting like it has. Retroactively speaking, I thought you made of sterner stuff!
As for your challenge; it's not as catchy as PRetro, but I've managed to butcher together REpungnanTRO (repugnant). Best I could do, I'm disappointed with it. Or perhaps REjecTRO? Rejecting the notion of anything good! Actually, I prefer this one.
SnakeswithLasers
Member
I got to 30 finally! (On my Guardian.)
Can I do instances now? Would any guildies want to do some with me at some point this week? I transferred over to your server, so it shouldn't be that complicated to get arranged--I just don't know if anyone does the level 30 dungeons.
Can I do instances now? Would any guildies want to do some with me at some point this week? I transferred over to your server, so it shouldn't be that complicated to get arranged--I just don't know if anyone does the level 30 dungeons.
At level 30 you can do the story mode of the Catacombs but it might be hard to find a group for that. Once you are 35 you can do the explorable mode which pretty much has groups going daily.
Mr. Luchador
Member
Yeah, the one fear I had hoped wouldn't happen in GW2 has already happened a month after release. Lower end dungeons seem tough to muster Story Modes for.
If I can get my guardian to 30 soon, (sitting at 25), I'd be down to run it with you....been spending too much time on my ranger with the weekend event. Really need to level my alts...they're sitting at 25, 5, 2, and 1, lol.
Well it doesn't help that AC story mode is awful.
I still haven't done AC Story mode, so I'd come if our schedules match up. This week will be somewhat hectic, but might be able to do one.
Mine are at 2, 2, 2, and 2, lol
br0ken_shad0w
Member
A thing some people are doing now to level their alts is to complete nearly the entire dungeon with their high-level toon and then switch at the last boss so the dungeon completion exp is given to their alt.
Mr. Luchador
Member
I didn't mind it too much, but then I've only ran it twice. Seemed to drag on a little, but I didn't think it was awful. What didn't you like about it?
Yea that's sort of the nature of the beast, but the guild we have seems more than willing to help out. With the Fractals, I'm always surprised (and happy) to see how many people are willing to start back over at level 1 to help someone out instead of only allowing higher level people join their party.
Certainly not everyone does that all the time, but I think we have a pretty good group of players.
Just wait 2 months and try to get in a level 1 fractal group. It's only like a week later and it's already super hard.
Well it's very difficult relative to it's level, it's really long, and one of the boss encounters is just way too difficult to figure out if you've never done it before and even then it's sort of sketchy to get right.
I always feel so ridiculous when someone quotes my username.
I wonder how big the increase in drop rate was. On Saturday there was only one other Frostfang on the TP. Although everyone else who got it possibly just held onto it.
Mr. Luchador
Member
In general the community seems decent (and I'm glad there's no 'BARRENS CHAT' in Map chat), but it could do with a decent LFG mechanic added to it to help bring people together. Sure doesn't help that the spam filter seems hyper sensitive to the amount of times you can say LFG xxx.
On the plus side mainly running this game with a small group of friends I know, so there's always that.
I think I hit it at 30 and enjoyed the challenge. There were plenty of times we wiped now I think about it, but we got back up and kept trying. You talking about the 2 ghost boss?
On the plus side mainly running this game with a small group of friends I know, so there's always that.
I think I hit it at 30 and enjoyed the challenge. There were plenty of times we wiped now I think about it, but we got back up and kept trying. You talking about the 2 ghost boss?
Yeah maybe we just sucked more, but we got wiped a lot. We entered from the
south entrance so we weren't even aware the north door was special in any way and spent like two hours trying to separate them to no avail until we had to look it up on google.
Mr. Luchador
Member
There's a special north door?! How does that work? We just threw rocks at them loads as they seemed to be lying around... looking useful.
nicoga3000
Saint Nic
We do have a solid group. I LOVE going back to help low fractals up, under the one stipulation that they listen to me and let me explain the encounters, haha. I think I've got 60 fractals done, and I'm pretty sure I've seen every encounter/route at this point. I want to help people, but that means some folks need to let go of the reigns a little. It sounds dickish, but on something like dredge, it's really not fun to have two people think they "get it" just to end up wiping you.
That being said, if I manage to find a group for the fractal that I'm on (just hit 11 last night), I'll likely run with them first since it's harder to find people at that level. When I can't muster up a group, I'll offer my aid to those in need.
Fractals are a fantastic concept in a guild scenario when everyone wants to see everyone else succeed.
Well the north gate has two doors that open and close with switches when you put boulders on them. The trick is to trap one of them in between the two doors and then wail on him/her. We tried it the way you did it for a long time, but kept getting owned by confusion.
Sir Abacus
Member
This. AC Story is tuned way too high for people who are going to be in underlevelled blues and greens but it's trivial when you come back at 80 in yellows and golds though.
br0ken_shad0w
Member
I wonder if an auto LFG system would help with this. If ANet is insistent on having difficulty levels, then a LFG system that find players the same difficulty level as you is the best way to mitigate this. Much of the criticism from an LFG system is because of WoW and only because loot is shared in that game.
Mr. Luchador
Member
I had no idea. Clever. Thanks for that.
nicoga3000
Saint Nic
Nope - puts you in a group.
Could that mechanic be put on dungeons? Fractals might be hard because of the levels, but for example AC Story mode, maybe they will put something like that in place there?
nicoga3000
Saint Nic
In theory, yes. I'm not actually sure why ANet hasn't done something like this, especially because (as pointed above) loot is instanced. There's no need to fight over who gets what.
Nemesis121
Member
New free content is awesome, the experience of the final event wasn't it was too fucking long got bored 45mins in...plus my rewards were pathetic other players got precursors and said lol I just got here, while many players were there for the whole thing, the 2 exotics I got were level 79, the one level 80 gear was rare magic find lol..only decent item was 20slot box...
Lone_Prodigy
Member
I wasn't even getting XP for Champion Karkas (though it may partly be due to the fact that I stood way back to rez people and let my illusions do the attacking) but that monthly would've been a lot faster to obtain had I gotten credit for a lot of the Karka kills. Ended up having to farm Young Karkas to get it (at least the drops were decent).
As for the finale, the reinforcement phases were stupid (at one point I was AFK'ing for 5 minutes at a time and would come back to little progress) and it was too long and linear (wasn't a fan of the backtracking either). I would've liked it to be split into more than 2 events (planting explosives and the very end) since it wasn't even enough to satisfy my daily.
Still, it wasn't bad. The 20-slot bag is perfect since my bank is nearly full (wish I could stack Black Lion salvage kits). The items either don't match my level or profession (I'm level 45) haha.
Zyrusticae
Banned
No, power creep is a completely unrelated issue caused by the very thing I came to GW2 to get away from: constant vertical progression as a method of extending playtime to get more players to pony up for a subscription fee. (Thank goodness we're moving away from that.)
And really, it's more than a little insulting to absolutely everyone who came to this game because of the promise that everyone is on the same even ground, with absolutely minimal effort required to get BIS gear.
And since we're going on a tangent anyways, difficulty in GW2 could see some serious improvement. They could, for example, have more than two difficulties - 'easy' (story mode), 'medium' (something like explorable mode with encounters toned down but fewer rewards), and 'hard' (current explorable mode).
Getting back to your analogy, the difference is that those events are most certainly going to pop up again at another time, possibly next year, and the only "reward" for attending them is the experience itself - you don't get money back or anything; you're there for the fun of it. In GW2, not only are these events never going to happen ever again, they suddenly threw in gobs of loot with no warning that people are finding very hard to ignore...
The problem is that it is a hugely disproportionate reward for the exact same effort.
One guy shows up for the entire event, gets 2g worth of exotics. Another guy shows up for the last 15 minutes and gets two precursors, instant 200+ gold.
If you don't see the problem here, I don't see a point in further discussion.
Hey wait, I'm Hawaiian now? Cool.
I don't know what you're talking about with EVE Online. I'm sorry I can't follow. It sounds like your examples are completely outside of the scope of what I'm talking about, if it affected a majority of the playerbase and they rioted or whatever. I know that the in-game content is much more player-driving in EVE Online as well and maybe this makes the percentages more sensitive or something. But I can't understand or relate to anything you just described so I'm not going to attempt to refute it.
Some decisions are inherently bad. Here are examples of decisions made by ArenaNet that were inherently bad:
1) Render culling to improve performance that prevents enemies/other players from being visible at all until after they are in range and can damage you
2) Moving 100% of the major reward for doing explorable dungeon paths to the complete end of the dungeon- such that anyone who failed to complete a dungeon would get nothing out of it (or actually pay gold for the experience)
3) Making dungeon tokens soulbound when they are unique to each dungeon
4) Having the final battle of the game's story rely heavily on sitting on a turret
5) Allowing the Orbs in WvW to give the already-dominant team an additional layer of advantage while the Outmanned buff didn't even improve the chances of the losing side
These were all things that virtually- almost literally- no one would defend. People had different ideas about how to handle them, but everyone agreed that they were bad decisions. The vocal minority was essentially in making these concerns known, there's no denying it.
Note that in 3/5 cases above, major steps were already taken by ArenaNet to correct them. I am sanguine that the other two will be addressed over time as well. These are things that benefit the vast majority of players. And by benefit I don't mean "give more in-game rewards to," but improve the content and gameplay of the actual product.
What you are voicing your complaints about is a bit different. People (including me) are defending the decision. I think it had a lot of merit, personally. This is where the malcontent pool comes into play. Some portion of the player base would have issues with what they did no matter what they did- please understand how different a concept this is than "there's no such thing as an inherently bad decision."
Another way of looking at it is: you think this event and the rewards were mostly bad with some good. I think it was mostly good with some bad. Essentially you and I cancel each other out on this one.
What evidence do you have that they are not currently pleasing the majority- even the vast majority? It feels like we've lost all perspective to some degree. NeoGAF has ~90,000 registered members. GW2 has >2,000,000 registered accounts. You and I are the fringe- whether we like it or not.
The entire premise of precursors and legendaries, which is sort of all you're upset over right now, necessitates a "haves" and "have-nots" scenario. If everyone could get a legendary, no one would want a legendary. This event made it a bit easier for everyone to get one.
The idea that this event created a divide where there was none before is ludicrous. In fact all the event did regarding the divide in question, mathematically speaking, was shrink it. Surely you must understand what I mean.
Describing this as subverting the cooperative environment they've established is fallacious. The situation you've evoked is akin to only a certain number of people being able to loot the chest. During a dungeon run, there's no guarantee that all players looting a chest get the same level of reward- nor should there be. It's random. Does that make sense?
1. If you don't care about the loot, then this event shouldn't upset you. That's all there is to it. I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about when you say it "affects your moment-to-moment gameplay." Please clarify, I just don't understand how that could be possible. Your mention of T3 culturals confuses me even further. They are PURELY cosmetic, in essence, a huge gold sink just to change the way you look- no impact on gameplay whatsoever.
2. This game does not have a predominant gear grind. This point will probably be argued for months and years, but to anyone who has actually achieved the "max stats" you're currently able to have in-game and also played Diablo III, this is a simple and incontrovertible fact. So I don't understand why this is relevant. Sorry if I misunderstood why you mentioned it, totally possible.
3. *shrug* Now this is just opinion; I disagree but it's also largely irrelevant. Precursors/legendaries offer no substantial gameplay advantage.
I've honestly lost track of why you care about this so much, which is surprising. If getting a precursor/legendary doesn't matter to you then it's not an issue that you didn't. If getting a huge amount of gold all at once to put toward your other cosmetic goals is what matters to you, and you're peeved because you didn't get 100 gold over the weekend, then get in line
Why take it so hard?
:-/ I'm descriptively spelling out a phenomenon I believe is occurring (with some level of certainty in all areas except the pure numerical values involved). I'm not voicing an opinion of any kind (until the end, when I described how I'm "dealing with it").
I don't know what you're talking about with EVE Online. I'm sorry I can't follow. It sounds like your examples are completely outside of the scope of what I'm talking about, if it affected a majority of the playerbase and they rioted or whatever. I know that the in-game content is much more player-driving in EVE Online as well and maybe this makes the percentages more sensitive or something. But I can't understand or relate to anything you just described so I'm not going to attempt to refute it.
No one is saying that. Why did you just build that strawman?
Some decisions are inherently bad. Here are examples of decisions made by ArenaNet that were inherently bad:
1) Render culling to improve performance that prevents enemies/other players from being visible at all until after they are in range and can damage you
2) Moving 100% of the major reward for doing explorable dungeon paths to the complete end of the dungeon- such that anyone who failed to complete a dungeon would get nothing out of it (or actually pay gold for the experience)
3) Making dungeon tokens soulbound when they are unique to each dungeon
4) Having the final battle of the game's story rely heavily on sitting on a turret
5) Allowing the Orbs in WvW to give the already-dominant team an additional layer of advantage while the Outmanned buff didn't even improve the chances of the losing side
These were all things that virtually- almost literally- no one would defend. People had different ideas about how to handle them, but everyone agreed that they were bad decisions. The vocal minority was essentially in making these concerns known, there's no denying it.
Note that in 3/5 cases above, major steps were already taken by ArenaNet to correct them. I am sanguine that the other two will be addressed over time as well. These are things that benefit the vast majority of players. And by benefit I don't mean "give more in-game rewards to," but improve the content and gameplay of the actual product.
What you are voicing your complaints about is a bit different. People (including me) are defending the decision. I think it had a lot of merit, personally. This is where the malcontent pool comes into play. Some portion of the player base would have issues with what they did no matter what they did- please understand how different a concept this is than "there's no such thing as an inherently bad decision."
Another way of looking at it is: you think this event and the rewards were mostly bad with some good. I think it was mostly good with some bad. Essentially you and I cancel each other out on this one.
Do you really think it's impossible that your judgment might be clouded by the fact that you are upset by this particular instance?
What evidence do you have that they are not currently pleasing the majority- even the vast majority? It feels like we've lost all perspective to some degree. NeoGAF has ~90,000 registered members. GW2 has >2,000,000 registered accounts. You and I are the fringe- whether we like it or not.
Here I believe you are completely muddying what was a strong argument (that I happened to disagree with).
The entire premise of precursors and legendaries, which is sort of all you're upset over right now, necessitates a "haves" and "have-nots" scenario. If everyone could get a legendary, no one would want a legendary. This event made it a bit easier for everyone to get one.
The idea that this event created a divide where there was none before is ludicrous. In fact all the event did regarding the divide in question, mathematically speaking, was shrink it. Surely you must understand what I mean.
Again, you are muddying your argument heavily. It's a stronger case to make to stick to the fact that some people couldn't participate in the event and thus missed out on significant rewards, and some people who did participate got lesser rewards. Those facts offend you and that's reasonable even if I disagree.
Describing this as subverting the cooperative environment they've established is fallacious. The situation you've evoked is akin to only a certain number of people being able to loot the chest. During a dungeon run, there's no guarantee that all players looting a chest get the same level of reward- nor should there be. It's random. Does that make sense?
Uh oh. Suddenly I get the impression we may all be being toyed with- and if that's the case I'm pretty embarrassed. But taking this serious for the time being, I hope you can acknowledge how skewed these points are!
1. If you don't care about the loot, then this event shouldn't upset you. That's all there is to it. I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about when you say it "affects your moment-to-moment gameplay." Please clarify, I just don't understand how that could be possible. Your mention of T3 culturals confuses me even further. They are PURELY cosmetic, in essence, a huge gold sink just to change the way you look- no impact on gameplay whatsoever.
2. This game does not have a predominant gear grind. This point will probably be argued for months and years, but to anyone who has actually achieved the "max stats" you're currently able to have in-game and also played Diablo III, this is a simple and incontrovertible fact. So I don't understand why this is relevant. Sorry if I misunderstood why you mentioned it, totally possible.
3. *shrug* Now this is just opinion; I disagree but it's also largely irrelevant. Precursors/legendaries offer no substantial gameplay advantage.
I've honestly lost track of why you care about this so much, which is surprising. If getting a precursor/legendary doesn't matter to you then it's not an issue that you didn't. If getting a huge amount of gold all at once to put toward your other cosmetic goals is what matters to you, and you're peeved because you didn't get 100 gold over the weekend, then get in line
Why take it so hard? I'm happy to run it any time, especially with how ludicrously lucrative dungeons are now. See you in-game!
nicoga3000
Saint Nic
The problem is, again, a sense of entitlement. What if the guy who showed up at the end simply couldn't be there because of work or family or previous commitments? Is it his fault that the RNG gods were on his side? No.
I'm really curious - what did you get from the one time event?
By the way, this is another example of something I'd call an Inherently Bad Decision. It seems like an unavoidable problem and I hope they address it.
Internally, I have some really interesting ideas for guild events (with prizes!) that ensure that anyone who participates will get to progress in the fractals a bit. I have no problem at all allllll allllll doing fractal level 1 as many times as it takes for every single guildie to get up, but I want to incentivize it for others (though as the leaders have said, it will neeeever be required).
I really hope Anet addresses the event credits. My main is a Mesmer (only lvl 43), but it's just really frustrating to know that I will not really be effective at lvl 80 if I decide to farm for a legendary. Mesmer is my favorite class so far given the playstyle, but I may consider switching to a different class if it's going to be such a chore to play Mesmer at 80.
Isn't that the norm though to either get something of great value or not much at all? If everyone got the rare skins they wouldn't be rare anymore...I've never played wow but drawing from Guild Wars 1, I did tons of dungeon runs with an old guild and with my luck I never got a Froggy or BDS scepter, no Crystalline sword or Dryad Bow or Voltaic Spear. Stuff that would have fetched dozens to hundred of Ecto in the original game. Should I have been pissed that I would run dungeons with those parties but rarely ever got anything of value from the chests? On birthdays I never got the Bone Dragon or Lich or Varesh or Endless Mad King tonic or whatever all the ones that would fetch 100+ ectos. Just the plebian ones that fetched for a handful of platinum. I always assumed random chance and rng luck was going to be present. Sometimes you get lucky.
Wait, what?
I don't understand how the first sentence relates to the rest of your post. Also mesmers are amazing.
Precisely. Some guy got a spark from a crab. Should I be pissed if I killed a crab and got nothing?
This way, even if you didn't get a precursor, they're much cheaper now if you want one so it helps you in the end anyways.
They are connected, his statements. Basically, he's worried about being able to tag/get credit effectively thru the dynamic events during a good sized zerg (think Orr zergs). We can do 1mob ok, but really need a lil time more than most classes to get the mob tags needed for such an event.
That said, Ive had no problems with the one Orr run I did with Ash et al a week or two ago. They key thing here is being in a group to do the DE's vs solo running it. At that time I also ran a sword mh and staff build, so had decent aoe if they were clumped and still filled my bags to overfilling.
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