Flame & Frost, The Gathering Storm - February patch

[Valeron]

It is a bit underwhelming so far but they have said it will ramp up pretty well. I thought they did an excellent job with the GW Beyond stuff so I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt here.

[nevermore]

Can we just talk about the absolute lack of foresight on ANet's behalf when it comes to Guesting?
I know, they just added the feature, it's the players who exploit it... but still.
Doing any of the dragons or other chest events has become almost impossible now. 10-15 minutes before any of the events start I'm already being put into the overflow... :/
It just needs a bit of tweaking... Maybe give priority to people who are on the server as opposed to ones who are only guesting? I dunno. But it's been pissing me off for days now.

[Valeron]

Maybe just limit getting the chest reward to once per account. Then you are done for 24 hours or reset.

[Karizee]

Can we just talk about the absolute lack of foresight on ANet's behalf when it comes to Guesting?
I know, they just added the feature, it's the players who exploit it... but still.
Doing any of the dragons or other chest events has become almost impossible now. 10-15 minutes before any of the events start I'm already being put into the overflow... :/
It just needs a bit of tweaking... Maybe give priority to people who are on the server as opposed to ones who are only guesting? I dunno. But it's been pissing me off for days now.

With an average of almost 60k accounts per server you'd be hitting overflows even without Guesting. I think there is a cap of ~500 per map.

[Meledelion]

I think the dragon chest farmers really don't help though. If a map really only holds 500players and there's 60k players on average per server that means that only 0.8% of the server population has to guest inorder to make OF pop up...

[Lane]

Re: Living Story. I've just made sure I have my achievements done. I do find it funny that they're going to Southsun Cove. So, they're finally going to put some content on that dead map?

Re: Chests. I am really not in favor of once per account, but as far as I'm concerned they could make it your server only and have guesting disable you from interacting with another server's chests. However, that's just a band-aid fix.

The real issue is it's simply not profitable to do much of anything in GW2, which is why everyone's flocked to these chests in the first place. They need to make other things worthwhile, but unfortunately it'd just be easier to nerf chests and send everyone scurrying to the next big money-making thing.

[rhandric]

The problem with that fix, Lane, is that you're fixing one issue (people abusing guesting) by making guesting counter-productive to people using it "legitimately" (ie, to play with friends, or on a non-dead server, or....etc).

[Lane]

I thought about that, but how is making it once per account any better? Plus, you'd only have to do it for about a half dozen chests, not all of them, just the ones people are abusing guesting to get to in the first place.

I'm not saying it's the ideal solution, but it would discourage guesting for chests. As I said, I'd prefer they make doing other things in the game profitable, they need to (IMO) diversify money-making if they're truly interested in spreading out their playerbase. Otherwise, everyone is always going to crowd into the few areas where you can actually earn a decent amount of coin.

[rhandric]

Well, if they made it once per account per day, they could balance the rewards so that it was comparably rewarding as it currently is -- a bit more rewarding if you only have one character, a bit less rewarding if you have, say, 4+ characters, but overall comparable. The downside that would have would be emphasizing those events as being *the* way of making money, more so than they might already be seen as. In actuality, there are probably a vast number of changes that need to be made at once to simultaneously decrease "abuse" of guesting on events, make more activities more rewarding/encouraging people to do more activities, and ensuring that the economy doesn't get fucked up in the process.

[carnifex2005]

Re: Living Story. I've just made sure I have my achievements done. I do find it funny that they're going to Southsun Cove. So, they're finally going to put some content on that dead map?

Re: Chests. I am really not in favor of once per account, but as far as I'm concerned they could make it your server only and have guesting disable you from interacting with another server's chests. However, that's just a band-aid fix.

The real issue is it's simply not profitable to do much of anything in GW2, which is why everyone's flocked to these chests in the first place. They need to make other things worthwhile, but unfortunately it'd just be easier to nerf chests and send everyone scurrying to the next big money-making thing.

Which is why I think a lot of these events are always crowded. I think that a lot of the community (and I'm one of them) think that this gravy train isn't going to last, so you better stock up before the well gets nerfed.

[Karizee]

There are 20 loot pinata boss chests in the game, people are focusing on 5.

Once people start becoming aware of the other chests it'll spread out. At any given time there are 2 or 3 boss chest events on my server - no need to guest for it.

[Lane]

Well, if they made it once per account per day, they could balance the rewards so that it was comparably rewarding as it currently is -- a bit more rewarding if you only have one character, a bit less rewarding if you have, say, 4+ characters, but overall comparable.

I don't know. I can't think of much that would be worth a once per account per day limitation. At that point there'd be no reason not to go back to the old system.

Which is why I think a lot of these events are always crowded. I think that a lot of the community (and I'm one of them) think that this gravy train isn't going to last, so you better stock up before the well gets nerfed.

I suspect it will. I've never gotten the impression Anet wants the majority of players to have much in the way of disposable income because they don't make any money that way. Any way people have to subvert paying real money for gems is going to be nerfed.

[Drakhar]

Maybe just limit getting the chest reward to once per account. Then you are done for 24 hours or reset.

I can't for the life of me figure out why this isn't the case yet.

Am I the only one that remembers GW1 chests that reset monthly?

[leafs43]

I've missed most of this second part.


But lets say I want to jump in and complete it.....how long does it take to get the first level of achievements?

[Meledelion]

I can't for the life of me figure out why this isn't the case yet.

Am I the only one that remembers GW1 chests that reset monthly?

Those were random loot chests bound to the world not a fight, all you had to do was walk up to it and use it and bam loot.
This isn't the case with dragon events (or shouldn't be) hence there's a difference.

gw1chests=free gw2chest=reward (think of fow/uw/.. chests which also didn't have a cap).

[Durzlla]

I've missed most of this second part.


But lets say I want to jump in and complete it.....how long does it take to get the first level of achievements?

Ok, so the second part is currently going on, you can complete both the first and second part achieves currently, I'd suggest checking out the refugee camp in LA (marked by a golden starburst) that'll get you going on the scavenger hunt, the killing one you'll likely get while looking for the scavenger hunt items (unless you google the current location like a lot of people do). And then the Volunteer one you get credit for by lighting camp fires, building signs collecting objects off fallen refugees etc.

PS: talk to the NPCs in BC and Hoelbrak because they'll give you some info on where the scavenger items will be near.

[Drakhar]

Those were random loot chests bound to the world not a fight, all you had to do was walk up to it and use it and bam loot.
This isn't the case with dragon events (or shouldn't be) hence there's a difference.

Well then there's a problem, because there isn't a difference. GW2 event chests are the exact same as the unlocked, monthly resetting Nightfall chests. A simple task that requires little skill, a few minutes of time, and knowing where to go, and rewards rather well. One game requires a runner build or a bunch of heroes/henchies, the other requires hitting tab and 1 every now and then.

gw1chests=free gw2chest=reward (think of fow/uw/.. chests which also didn't have a cap).

The equivalent of those types of chests are in GW2 too. They're called dungeon rewards.