Originally posted by evolver1972

Originally posted by ZeGerman
Got on when i got home from work on friday nothing was happening couldn't figure out where to go, talked to people online many of them didn't know what to do at first.  ANet will have to a better job with making it so that if a player is not their at the start of the event they can figure out where to go, they send you a little letter telling you to go talk to this person which I did but then found out later i was just doing meaningless side stuff and not actualy part of the real event.

That's a problem.....If Anet tells you everything to do and what to do, they are accused of hand-holding and making a care-bear game.  If they don't, people complain they don't know what to do.

The game is made so that you explore the world.  That's supposed to be part of the fun of the game.  While I get that it can be frustrating to do something that's ultimately worthless to your goal (in this case playing the weekend event), that's part and parcel to how the game is intended to be played.

Also, there were a lot of hints about where things were going to happen (Lion's Arch) so it shouldn't have been too difficult to figure out where to be at the start of the event.

Their puzzle approach to the event might have worked better in a longer event, but with a 3 phase timed event over the weekend it didn't work at all.

I had the exact same problem.  I read all the stuff, visited all the places, participated in a couple of event that didn't increment or trigger anything.  I had no idea if I was on the right track or not.  I kept missing out and stuff was bugged so I eventually moved on.

They really should have learned from Trion, who tried this sort of thing with their first event launching a raid zone, and spread this out over a couple of weeks.

I really would hope they're not listening to the idiots spouting and posturing about hand-holding.  If they listen to that extremely vocal minority then their events will all be doomed to failure.  For events, people want to find the action and get into it.  The clues should have been more explicit and the trigger feedback much better so people know where they're at in the event timeline and what to do next.

I'm sure they'll take this experience and do better next time.  They do know how to run a fun event.  It was just this style of event is sort of new to them and they didn't handle it well.

Fan of many MMO's, fan of GW2, fan of  most video games in general.

One time event, I understand the reasoning behind it.  I don't like that my Aussie, NZ and Asian friends couldn't really attend.  If your game is global, you may want to rethink the set up.

Phase 1. ok

Scavenger hunts. Not so ok, bugged for me so a no go. Fractals of the Mist, new dungeon is decent, I actually like it better than many of the dungeons so far, but I already see gating issues and elitist behaivor beinning to rear thier heads.

Phase 2. ok.  Island, small but decent for farming. Event, clearing the island had a purpose and I felt like I was helping.  Had a few culling/rendering issues, others had the same or lag or all 3.

Phase 3. pretty good for the idea of it.  I had a bad experience all around yesterday though with actually completing it which left largely a bad taste in my mouth and made my ass hurt. What just happened to me.

I reach the island. A swarm of players assault the karkas hive escorting NPC's planting explosives.  Alot of death and rezzing.  We escape, we treb the hive, the Ancient karka reveals himself.  He moves to find shelter, we chop down a giant tree that falls on it damaging it. He calls in an army and goes armor invincible.  We kill his underlings, he begins to run...we give chase damaging him with steam from geysers in the ground. He calls in more friends, we begin to morter them from a nearby outpost. 

THEN, the lag begins with buttons cycling wating to fire off but just won't.  He then heads back to the hive for a last stand, possibly escape back to where they came through the planets crust.

nearing that the Ancient Karka death I DC.  I just think crap, 3hrs and then this happens, wth.  So I get back in and the Boss is dead and no chest for me.  It's happened before in many games I've played but still made me feel hurt.  I then try to enter about 20+ more overflows and they all read that the Boss is down.  Found 1 or 2 bugged events where the demo team got stuck.

Then I find out that people have begun to ferry in players to active events. I get into one.  This one at the escort part.  Up comes part 2 with the tree chopping and reinforcements.  Nearing the last 5% of this part the client crashes.  I get back in and other say the same thing.

Ouch is all I can say.

I decide to give up with completing this event, arrgghghghhghhh!!!! My complusive nature won't let me. I try once more and sure enough I get into a newly made shard to begin the process again.

1. Escort Demo Team

2. Chase Ancient , chop down tree.

3. Eliminate Reinforcements. Nearing the end........BAMMMMMM!   A NEW BUILD AVAILABLE, GAME TO RESET IN 2 MINS. 

11 hours, 3 solid attemps later.

I don't need rewards, anet can keep them.  I'm just feeling drained after being shut down so much yesterday and pissed I wasn't given the satisfaction of completing something I made time for.  I tried.

Honestly I beleive the whole thing to be a shining success. Clearly everyones experience differs, thats just something thats going to happen in an MMO. Not everyone has the same stable internet connections or runs the game on the same computer. Personally i never experienced any lag in Phase 3, and never once disconnected.

Phase 1 had its issues with broken Npcs, but Anet recognized this, fixed them as soon as they could, and even extended the one event that they couldnt get to in time. I was able to complete both events, which were very well thoughtout, and required a bit of problem solving on the players side. The rewards (one was 5 commendations, the other a small vial of Karma) were not enough to make anyone who wasnt able to complete it feel left out, but still rewarded the ones who did. 

Phase 2 LA event was the only one i had real lag issues and I was in an overflow that didnt build the treb until 45 minutes after the event was scheduled. But in the end, I made it to the island and fully completed the chain there. Escorting the NPCs around the island to set up bases and waypoints. Overall another huge success. No bugs, no lag. And no negative posts on the forums, the whole thing went off without a hitch. 

Phase 3 was similarly successful. If you didnt know where to start, you were hiding under a rock. In LA the event told you to be on the island. Twitter and the Wiki both told you to be on the island. And we recieved ingame mail telling you...yup get to the island. Basically picking up where Phase 2 left off, there was no excuse not to be there.

As for lag and disconnects. Those arent Anets fault. You can sit and whine and complain all you want, but it wasnt something they caused. There were thousands of people who had no issues, and im willing to place money more were successful than the ones that werent. My computer is far from the best, but i am on a 20mb Fiber network. It was stable enough that my brother and I both did the event together with zero lag and no disconnects. That along with being in mumble with a hundred other people on my server with similar experience is enough to tell me its not on Anet, the issue was at the players end. 

Post got long so splitting it. Continuing on...

The so-called one time event actually ran on throughout the day in different overflows. I dont know if Anet did this on purpose or if it was an accident, but it was above and beyond what they were required to do. Many people were able to participate in Phase 3 and thus reap the rewards, long after the event should have been over. This in itself makes most of the whining and crying worthless. I was actually able to get on 3 different characters, and through some overflow manipulation, i was able to participate and complete the event 3 times, gaining rewards each time. And no i did not get any precursor. Did that mean the event failed, NO. Im not a 12 yr old entitled gamer that thinks i should have the same reward everyone else did. There was a chance for one, i wasnt lucky. Doesnt make the event a failure. 

Aside from the massive success of the weekend events, the Fractals dungeon is similarly a huge success. The dungeons are fun, not too long, and the scaling difficulty makes it accessable to everyone. Im on difficulty 6, but have run each level at least 2, and in all those runs have never crossed a bug or blocking mechanic. Having 9 fully functioning maps (with multiple paths in each increasing the number above 9) is exactly what a success is. Kudos to Anet.

TL;DR Event was a huge success, and content is fun and engaging. If you experienced lag or disconnects, either get a more stable connection or expect the same from every large event going forward. Its not Anets fault, and they are not responsible for fixing it. 

Originally posted by aslan132

Event was a huge success, and content is fun and engaging. If you experienced lag or disconnects, either get a more stable connection or expect the same from every large event going forward. Its not Anets fault, and they are not responsible for fixing it. 

I am really sorry, but I need to take issue with this. I have a six core machine, solid state drives, and a high speed cable internet connection... and I experienced a lot of what many were complaining about. The lag was not the internet, but more so the server and the client trying to communicate in real time, and trying to display all that crap on the screen. If you did not have any lag, then good for you. However, there are tons of people out there who are not happy right now. THAT, Sir, is the problem for ANet right now. Tell a player to upgrade and those players will move to another game they can run. That is not what ANet wants to hear, and neither do you if you wish to keep playing GW2 as long as GW1 has been around. It is not the users that have a problem here... it is ANet. Why?... because they rely on a massive player base and the selling of gems to make money. Right now, they will get no money from me for Gems until they show that they understand how bad this Event was and are taking steps to deal with it.

Originally posted by Rockniss
I hate to say it, but this event made me resub to World of Warcraft the greatest and best mmo of all time even if they do make you play pokemon with pandas, sure does feel good to be back.

Translation: Butters-  "Fine...Iam going back to 'Hello Kitty: Island Adventure' anyways..."

<.<

Originally posted by Torvaldr

Originally posted by evolver1972

Originally posted by ZeGerman
Got on when i got home from work on friday nothing was happening couldn't figure out where to go, talked to people online many of them didn't know what to do at first.  ANet will have to a better job with making it so that if a player is not their at the start of the event they can figure out where to go, they send you a little letter telling you to go talk to this person which I did but then found out later i was just doing meaningless side stuff and not actualy part of the real event.

That's a problem.....If Anet tells you everything to do and what to do, they are accused of hand-holding and making a care-bear game.  If they don't, people complain they don't know what to do.

The game is made so that you explore the world.  That's supposed to be part of the fun of the game.  While I get that it can be frustrating to do something that's ultimately worthless to your goal (in this case playing the weekend event), that's part and parcel to how the game is intended to be played.

Also, there were a lot of hints about where things were going to happen (Lion's Arch) so it shouldn't have been too difficult to figure out where to be at the start of the event.

Their puzzle approach to the event might have worked better in a longer event, but with a 3 phase timed event over the weekend it didn't work at all.

I had the exact same problem.  I read all the stuff, visited all the places, participated in a couple of event that didn't increment or trigger anything.  I had no idea if I was on the right track or not.  I kept missing out and stuff was bugged so I eventually moved on.

They really should have learned from Trion, who tried this sort of thing with their first event launching a raid zone, and spread this out over a couple of weeks.

I really would hope they're not listening to the idiots spouting and posturing about hand-holding.  If they listen to that extremely vocal minority then their events will all be doomed to failure.  For events, people want to find the action and get into it.  The clues should have been more explicit and the trigger feedback much better so people know where they're at in the event timeline and what to do next.

I'm sure they'll take this experience and do better next time.  They do know how to run a fun event.  It was just this style of event is sort of new to them and they didn't handle it well.

I will definitely agree with that sentiment.  I love GW2 and I think Anet is a great company that really tries to accomodate their fans.  But, of course, they're not perfect and they really showed it on this one, IMHO.  They can definitely do better, they already have.  Hopefully they'll learn from this and wow us next time.

And I agree, spreading the event out would have made it better in terms of being able to figure things out.  Hell, having things actually work the way they were supposed to would have done that probably.  :)

Halloween event was definitely better. They should never try to push all players on 1 map at the same time b/c the event will run only once. It only creates lag and when something goes wrong you end up with tons of angry players. They should spread people over multiple maps in future events and give them enough time to finish whatever they prepared.During Halloween they did it and it was fine imo.

But as i said earlier I considered this event to be just a small addition to a cool and big content patch.

Originally posted by evilastro
Also when you have a worldwide game, its really rude to put one time events on when half the world is asleep or at work.

I agree, I had a quick look and found nothing special going on.

Went to the island but all I found was weird looking crabs that I could solo, or ones that would 1 hit kill the entire party, not much point in being there so went back to leveling, made it to lvl 80 by the end of te weekend!

All in all, i'm glad that some people are enjoying the game, but to me, it seems rather crazy that I can go to a lower level area and get killed with just one hit. I therefor give the award for stupidest idea ever to be implemented in a game "drop the level of the player to that of the area"!

For me, GW2 has been fail all around. From a hacked account on the first day that took way too long to address with no info coming from the Customer Support at all, to a Halloween event that was no where near as awesome as the GW1 events, and now a bugged event that lacked anything resembling interesting.

Both events suffered from a lack of clear direction. All I saw were people having no clue what was going on, or how to participate in the events, and once again, a lack of communication from the Devs. I missed the event on Fri and the one on Sat was 30 min late starting. Some people even missed the event because they were at the fountain in LA and had no idea the event was elsewhere. Then the whole event was bleh, so I passed on Sun.

Think I'm done with GW2, it just hasn't been enough of a fun experience, though there are some things I like about it. Just not enough.

Boo Hiss! The event as a whole was a FAIL. I enjoyed Phase 2 for awhile and enjoyed exploring the island.... but overall I think they could have done better.

The BIG event at the first phase should have been ongoing (on and off during the day) in Lion's Arch so everyone can experience it to get immersed into the story. The only time they gave us was not good at all.

The event was a disaster.

Why I say that? Well the first part was lagged so much that there were over minute delays on abilities and clicking on the quest NPC. And the problem wasn't poor computers or connections, it was puerely the number of people in the area and the fact that the program can't handle that. Sure there were multiple overflow's (my group was divided between three after the start of the event) and when you died you got dumped on one of them randomly. It really wasn't fun fighting in those conditions.

The new creatures were nice addition, but we were able to damage them from start, not like they colums suggests, and had no problem killing them. Not sure if it was because of the huge number of people, but the few damage indicators I saw indicated that I did normal damage on them.

Then came the part to find out more about the creatures. As the column said the NPC's were bugged and only small number of people were able to progress on that. Got my own finished on sunday afternoon, after several patches that they made trying to fix the issues.

Then the second phase. It was advertised as fight to gain back control of the Lion's Arch city. At no time was Lion's Arch under enemy occupation, was really expecting them to shut down LA and we would have to fight to get it back (don't bother saying because it is the hub. All of the other five major cities can act as hubs too as they also have banks and such in them). Unfortunately I was inside the new dungeon at the start and it took us 5-10 minutes to get out. The event lasted whole 1.34 minutes and then it was over. People were complaining that the monsters would fall down dead as soon as they spawned.

After the event came the possibility of going to the new zone/island. When we got there, there started an Dynamic Event to clear the beach between landing points. That part was fun and actually brought the story forward. after that the same NPC wanted roads build and went on to check the island as a new Dynamic Event. What followed was a tour of the island along with just about all waypoints and Point's of Interest, really boring and took out all the self exploration out of it. Really mad at myself for deciding to follow that NPC.

Didin't take part of the last "super" event as I had seen what happens in the game when massive number of people decide to go to same place. Din't enjoy the first lag fest and wasn't going to go to another one.

Sure this was fun way of bringing new content and area to the game, but with the lags and bugs and poorly planned events the whole thing was a big let down.

We really thought the enemy would take over at least partially LA and then we would have to fight to get it back. Did that happen? No. The enemy made two appearances in LA and both times were wiped out.

We really thought that the enemy would be virtually impossible to damage until we found what they were vulnerable to. Did that happen? No. Sure the enemy had some nice protection, but was expeting more along the lines 75% damage immunity until made vulnerable.

We were expecting new and interesting zone. Did that happen? Yes and no. We got a new zone with one new enemy type and some new graphics. Too bad the zone is about the size of a major city (like Lion's Arch) and you run through it with the start up event. No exploration and discoveries left, and no vistas in the area either.

Thank you Anet for bringing us new content, but bad for you that you totally blew it.

Originally posted by Indrome

Originally posted by Czanrei
The map was too small (in my opinion), the Karka were oversized crabs(boring) (in my opinion), and the landscape of the island lacked originality as well (in my opinion). Overall I consider the event a fail. That's not even taking into consideration about the huge bugs.

Fixed that for you.

 

Personally, I loved it and am a satisfied customer not having paid a nickle for a whole weekend of world-spanning events and another one or two months of getting to know the new zone and dungeon. Both of which I find aesthetically very pleasing and well thought out.

And my fingers itch for whatever's to come next. (thanksgiving and christmas events to come... boy howdie!)

What are you? That judge from the Good Wife? Obviously it was his opinion... There is no need to say "in my opinion" after everything. It's creepy and weird.

As a siidenote, I think ANet isn't doing a very supuurb job with events. Why was the evnt only a weekend long? I ma in college and have a life, soit would have been nie if it had been a month long event as I don't have time to sit down as much as others do.

This one time event introduction was a big failure. Phase 1 invasion of LA was so laggy that my slot skills didn't even respond. Then there were the bugged npcs, which gave me nightmarish deja vu's of skill challenge npcs that stayed bugged for over a week. You keep checking back only to find it is still bugged(even though update notes said they fixed loads of skill challenge npcs).

Phase 2 recapture LA again was laggy. Not so much as first invasion though. But the Ancient Karka bugged out. On our server he was unkillable. We first thought not enough ppl knew about the solvent, but after checking players and being sure that most players were using the solving, we still only got him to about 80% hp and then he reset again. So instead we just danced on a wall next to the boss. This was my highlight of the event.

Couldn't bring myself to check Phase 3.

I'll see the new area and dungeon in the coming weeks. And I really hope that Winterfest next month will work a lot better.

I see many complainers here. How much did you pay for this content? We've got an awesome dungeon that is better than all others combined (imo), has 10 times more replayability (randomizing, infinite levels of difficulty), new lv 80 zone, new type of exotic gear to craft, new tier of gear to play for (this last one is something I like only if they stop at this tier).

And it was all for free. You would pay at least $30 worth of monthly fees to get an update like this.

Originally posted by Vhaln

Overall, I'd say the event was a massive failure.  I bet they lost more customers than they gained, due to all the issues.  Maybe if the new content were more impressive, that might have offset the problems of the event, but it's pretty minimal and lackluster.  It seems blatantly unfinished or something.

 

Really, I can't understand how anyone could call the event a success.

Can't really lose customers when they already paid for the game and there's no sub. Free new content = win. Rather than pay $50 for an expansion for a 9 year old game, i think its awesome. 

Originally posted by Overfiend138

Originally posted by Vhaln

Overall, I'd say the event was a massive failure.  I bet they lost more customers than they gained, due to all the issues.  Maybe if the new content were more impressive, that might have offset the problems of the event, but it's pretty minimal and lackluster.  It seems blatantly unfinished or something.

 

Really, I can't understand how anyone could call the event a success.

Can't really lose customers when they already paid for the game and there's no sub. Free new content = win. Rather than pay $50 for an expansion for a 9 year old game, i think its awesome. 

Heh, that's a rather self-centered way of looking at it, but I doubt ANet or NCSoft sees it that way.  They still want to be making money, for as long as possible, you can be sure.  They didn't make the game B2P, just to be charitable.

Originally posted by Zeus.CM

I see many complainers here. How much did you pay for this content? We've got an awesome dungeon that is better than all others combined (imo), has 10 times more replayability (randomizing, infinite levels of difficulty), new lv 80 zone, new type of exotic gear to craft, new tier of gear to play for (this last one is something I like only if they stop at this tier).

And it was all for free. You would pay at least $30 worth of monthly fees to get an update like this.

 

 

 

I think this is what is lost on all these arguments. We didn't pay for it (like with Rift's new expansion or WoW's or even GW1's) but I do think this was closer to what was done in GW1 with Sorrow's Furnace. I remember when that came out and people where gnashing teeth, saying how hard it was and what a waste of what A.Net did. It is all there on forums if you want to look it up. After a while people got used to the new content and 'BAM' was easy to play.