Is Istan the worst content of the game?

Hello everyone. I would like to vent about Istan a little bit, because I think it is severely diminishing the quality of the game overall.

In the broadest terms it has the following issues: It over-rewards, it incentivizes bad gameplay and behaviour, and it comes with some extremely questionable design choices.Let me elaborate.

Over-rewardingLong story short, the rewards are so freakin' good that no other map in the game can compete. This leads to overcrowding and thereby trivialization of whichever challenge the content might have had. On the other hand the content is ridiculously overtuned for small populations. Argueably you will almost never see a Istan map with less than 40 players, but in the middle of the night it might happen. If you ever tried to 10-man Palawadan you know what I'm talking about - it's just not meant to happen.

Incentivizing the worst gameplayBoth meta events come with a peculiar core concept: Lots of champions.Even the legendary superbosses are not the attraction of the events; the added champion trashmobs are. This is extremely out of line with the rest of the game and leads to people fighting for the chance to tag them ASAP before they die. Often times the window of opportunity to tag such a mob is only a few seconds wide.Because of this you're also not incentivized to actually fight anything, but rather to tag mobs and immediately move onto the next. Killing, ressing or harvesting anything or anyone is a strict net-loss because you might miss out on several champion tags during the few seconds you wasted. This cumulates into people creating engineers just so they can plant turrets in order to assist with tagging champions.

This, naturally, leads to extreme selfish behaviour which is highly uncommon for GW2. It also robs the events of any fun they might have been.

Questionable design choicesThe worst part about the things mentioned before is the sheer monotonousness. Every second champion just comes with the washing machine move (spins you around and explodes) or sky-lazers. I'll leave it up to you to decide if this is a gross flavour mismatch with the undead theme. In my opinion it is. To make things worse, the lighting was turned to eleven inside Palawadan, so your whole screen constantly looks like an acid trip; leaving you disoriented and guessing at where the next tag-target might be in the sea of bloom effects.

What's your opinion on the matter? What could be done to solve this (perceived) issue?Leave your comments below and let's hope ArenaNet listens to some of them.

It's not the worst content, it's normal content with relly overbuffed rewards. It's better than half if the lame LW3 maps.

You have valid points. Point 2 and 3 are the reason I am avoiding Istan. I can't see the "fun" in it, either, and the flashy screen makes my head ache (in addition to the low FPS and the fact that you miss many reward chests "on the fly" because they are covered by tons of player and pet names which you cannot deactivate).

"tag the horde" has been a problem from the very beginning of GW2. I fail to see what is "selfish" though in the things you describe, with a little experience, you should be able to tag the majority of mobs before they go down. It is extremely lame though, it is the most boring, mindless content (among similar), but just too good in rewards to ignore.

@NoiseRen.2403 said:It's not the worst content, it's normal content with relly overbuffed rewards. It's better than half if the lame LW3 maps.

Definitely. It's bad that Istan is as overtuned as it is, but there's worse. Domain of Kourna, Lake Doric and Ember Bay come to mind as easy examples.

I love Istan the way it is. It's not over-rewarding anymore. It was, but it got nerfed. Now it's similar to SW and many people do that meta too.

"Incentivizing the worst gameplay" - Depends on the player. To me, the worst gameplay is instanced group content because people who do them are usually rude, they only care about dmg numbers, you can't play what you enjoy or they kick you out of the group... I find it too stressful. In open world events, I can just relax, use the build I want and still earn Gold. That's exactly what I want from a video game.

I don't take any issues with rewards. It is not overtuned to the point that I care about missing out if I don't feel like going there. The visual effects on the other hand, that "washing machine" skill as the OP mentions is absolutely nuts.

For me it's a farming map, same as Bitterfrost.B)

@"Mea.5491" said:I love Istan the way it is. It's not over-rewarding anymore. It was, but it got nerfed. Now it's similar to SW and many people do that meta too.

"Incentivizing the worst gameplay" - Depends on the player. To me, the worst gameplay is instanced group content because people who do them are usually rude, they only care about dmg numbers, you can't play what you enjoy or they kick you out of the group... I find it too stressful. In open world events, I can just relax, use the build I want and still earn Gold. That's exactly what I want from a video game.

Istan promotes bad gameplay. It's just about zerging stuff down. At least in SW, you had to split up and you had some diverse gameplay due to different bosses. You also had to split up for the Vinewrath-Event and need to be able to at least carry some weight there. SW should actually be a lot more rewarding than Istan.

@Raizel.8175 said:It's just about zerging stuff down.

Tbh, I enjoy zerging stuff down. :) There's a whole game mode about zerging (WvW) and no one bats an eye, we have a few maps in PvE for zerging Champs and everyone loses their minds. :P

Strangely enough, I rather enjoy the map when I am playing it. It may not be the most complex but I find it fun to zerg things from time to time.

To each their own I suppose? Personally, I see nothing wrong with the map.

@Mea.5491 said:

@Raizel.8175 said:It's just about zerging stuff down.

As if open-world-gameplay wouldn't be sufficiently easy already...

There should be more sophisticated events like TT or Serpent's Ire so people have some variety in gameplay and difficulty, not mindless zergfests like Istan.

@"Raizel.8175" said:There should be more sophisticated events like TT or Serpent's Ire so people have some variety in gameplay and difficulty, not mindless zergfests like Istan.

We have that: every HoT meta (and even SW). People have to work together at multiple locations on the map to succeed. They are definitely harder than "zergfests". So leave Istan alone, it's our only good "zergfest".

@Mea.5491 said:

@"Raizel.8175" said:There should be more sophisticated events like TT or Serpent's Ire so people have some variety in gameplay and difficulty, not mindless zergfests like Istan.

I'd be ok with that if they'd nerf the rewards further. The game shouldn't promote some weird auto-attack-mentality and selfish behaviour. It's an MMO. It should be about group-effort. Istan isn't. It's just zerging stuff down mindlessly. Diverse gameplay and difficulty in MMOs is important. GW2 is rather a failure in that regard. People always complain about toxicity from evil raiders, PvPers and other subgroups, but don't realize that there are reasons for that behaviour (and the lack of accessiblity to such content).

It was nerfed twice, what else do you want? It's optional so if you don't like its zergy nature, don't play it. Don't ruin the fun of the people who enjoy it.

Don't like the map? Don't play it, easy as that.

I don't think the rewards are overtuned. I believe most other maps are just absolutely awful.

Sandswept Isles COULD be a better farm map, the wave defense event is much, much better than Istan in its entirety in terms of rewards and time investment. Sadly the following wailing on legendary mobs for 20 minutes is absolutely awful and worthless, since they only drop champion loot and are among the most annoying enemies mechanically. It's a worrying trend where most final events in these event chains are so awful they make it not worth doing. Amala is probably among the most annoying fights in the game, but at least there are champions that are worth farming simultaneously.

I don't believe the "only few seconds to tag" stuff anymore after they buffed the champ healthbars by the way. Since most people seeem to be 100% locked into their belief that you need to be ranged or pre cast skills to get a tag let me tell you: You can get 100% tags on every single champion that spawns as a melee only character just as easily. Keep in mind you only need to deal around 6k damage, That's two skills at max, then you go to the next etc. It's fast and simple, most if not all people should be able to do it without much of an issue.

I won't argue about the champ mechanics. I like to get flushed down a toilet. It's a deadly skill and usually people will wake up when they get swirled around and encouraged to pay attention and dodge or throw their CC out. Very few times are you actually actively encouraged to use CC like that beyond the "big attack coming" that you will just shrug off because it isn't a danger to a large amount of people.

Clearly Istan was designed to make up for the fact that PoF had the least amount of worthwhile events out of any content release. It's supposed to be the #1 spot, because we have been missing a good farm for a very long time. One that isn't on a long timer, one where people actually play and not just gather every 2 hours. It filled that gap, but in turn exposed many other events for what they are: Worthless. There is too much wasted potential when you see a lifeless event like the Kourna one. When you see that the final fight of the huge meta event on Sandswept Isles is a boring fight against a stationary enemy that doesn't threaten you whatsoever if you just melee him for 10 minutes. The fights can't be very satisfying with their obscene scaling due to the nature of open world. It takes far too long to kill one of them, the once a day chest is rarely ever worth the effort and in the end you wish you had never done it but instead farmed champions that will give you more loot for less effort (read: time spent on killing).

If anything: Buff the reward Legendary mobs themselves give. Maybe shift them from champ to boss, but don't change the amount.

@Raizel.8175 said:

@Mea.5491 said:

@Raizel.8175 said:There should be more sophisticated events like TT or Serpent's Ire so people have some variety in gameplay and difficulty, not mindless zergfests like Istan.

"weird auto-attack-mentality" - I'm an open world player and all of my skills are always on cooldown. You're doing it wrong.

"It's an MMO. It should be about group-effort" - It's an MMO. MM = Massively Multiplayer. I want to be in the massively multiplayer open world and zerg Champs down because I LIKE IT. That doesn't stop you from doing Fractals, Raids and other "group effort" stuff! I am glad we have OPTIONS! You can do what you enjoy and I can do what I enjoy. I don't come to the forum to ask Anet to nerf Fractals/Raids just because I don't like them! Why do you want to take MY fun away? And you're the one talking about "selfish behaviour"? Ironic.

I see a lot of opinions here being put as facts.

Yes, I really hate Istan. Never went back to it after completing the achievements and buying the weapon recipes

What's not to like about a meta where you run around in a 10-FPS slideshow just trying to tag stuff until the supply chests appear.

When I first started HoT I hated everything about it: huge aggro radius, everyone and their cousin was a veteran and would spam you with conditions, and you could never go from A to B, it was start at A, move down to A1, glide to A2, bounce up to A3 to find the cavern entrance that spirals to B.

But now with fully unlocked masteries and PoF mounts, I'm still only in Chapter 1 of LW 4, and have spent a fraction of the time in Vabbi or Desolation that I have in Auric Basin or VB.

And I agree with the comments about LW S3. I doubt I will ever do the story mode again as it would require me to go through Doric and Draconis Mons again. Ugh.

You might be right. I haven't enjoyed the LW PoF metas, so I've gone back to spending my time on HoT metas, pony farming and RIBA. They might not be the most profitable activities in game, but I never seem to get enough of them. Grinding gold is for the office :-)

I find Istan SO BORING. I can't even give a proper answer, it bores me to think about it.

Dear if you don't like easy Istan farm, the Orr maps are still in game, go farm Orr.

if someone gets downed in Instan it' their kitten fault. lazy peeps that can't be bothered to dodge red circles every 2 minutes.

Following your logic DS meta is even worse. No one reses there either

Map meta's, boss trains, wvw.. GW2 has been all about zerging since around the time the Scarlet Events in LS many moons ago.. I guess its just easier to make the content like that with open world . Lets be honest though, we might hate zerging (I know I do),but when there is no zerg we complain because we can't get the same content done..

The thing I would like to see and has been touched on by the OP.. meta's, Open worlde vents, champs, legendaries all need need some better scaling rather than just have a Serpents Ire or similar once a week when an open community kindly decides to organise it. Maps loose numbers reasonably fast in GW2 so some events (especially those with collections and achievements tied to them) need to be more forgiving when the maps are short manned, even it it means tuning the rewards down with it... at least they would get done a little more often.