Bounty Feedback [merged]

The title stands as a root question for something that isn't sitting right.

From a technical standpoint, it feels like a good idea. Group content, player activated (I think?), and some of the bosses have at least been interesting challenges.

...So why is it pulling teeth to get people to show up for them? Over the past few days, I'm 0 for 4 on getting them done, and I only got yesterday's bounty daily by hopping in on one to get lucky. Sorry for the click-baity title, but I'm hoping to see some changes in the way Bounties work, and I think they can with a few adjustments.

Recommendations:•Don't start the bounty clock until a player engages. This allows players time to coordinate and gather before taking on a bounty target. Map callouts don't work well, and a guild might not be able to mobilize on short 2-5 minutes notice.•AND/OR add more time to the bounty clock. 10 minutes likely isn't enough time to rally a map/guild, travel, and fight a champ/legendary. The timers need to be more generous in some way, and this is probably the easiest solution.•Make marks map-wide. Perhaps organization time isn't that big of an issue, but players aren't seeing the bounties or playing near bounty boards. A notice of a bounty being started with a map marker on the map might help bring more people in.
•Cycle bounties faster, especially Legendary ones. The collections have specific bounties in them, and having to wait, ...and wait... ...and wait.. for a bounty to come up only to find that no one is doing it is beyond frustrating. The quiet periods on bounties needs to be much shorter.•Rewards? Are players not showing up because the rewards and cheap? Just covering my bases on questions here, but perhaps that's an issue. The only reason I'd ever start Corrupted Facet is for the mount collection.

There are countless bounty trains going on, where large squads take on multiple if not all bounties.

They're a failure because they're a wretched replacement for world bosses and meta bosses.

Most bounties are recycled regular mob models with unholy amounts of HP that just takes a zerg of spamming 1 to win. They're terribly scaled, offer no storytelling or narrative to the zone whatsoever, and are little more than a spruced up champion train.

It's like they took champ trains from the desolate core tyria maps and thought it was a good idea over the cinematic, epic encounters of HoT maps.

Nothing even comes close to Dragonstand or the Tarir meta, or the race to stop the Gerent or preparing camps to then fight wyvern matriarchs/patriarchs and the trio.

I believe the clock already doesn't begin until a player with a bounty enters the area where the bounty spawns.Unfortunately a lot of players just go grab a bounty, spawn the mob, and then discover it's not something they can do on their own, so timers are often started inadvertantly. I don't know that starting the timer on the engage would fix that, though it certainly wouldn't hurt.

Being able to see activated bounties map-wide would be nice, but I think it all comes down to rewards.A couple pieces of un-ID'd gear, Karma, and a few Trade Contracts just isn't enough.

The only groups I ever see trying to complete the bounties are just doing one bounty from each region to get the mastery points, then they bail.The rewards need to be on par with the gold/hr of Silverwastes RIBA if they want bounties to be a regular activity.

I've completed two bounties to this point. One was by happy accident. I was exploring the Amnoon Harbor and a Choya(?) bounty popped on a little flat island. right where I was. The other was the Queen worm below the Temple of Kormir, and that was due to a map call-out. During the first beta weekend, I took one, which spawned as soon as I walked out of the Amnoon gate. That one, I was unable to solo, so it didn't get done.

My guess is, the people who are running bounties will need some incentive to come back. Lacking incentives, they won't redo them once the initial luster has fallen off. That might be more times for some, less for others. People redo Teq and Triple Trouble because they enjoy the greater degree of challenge (as compared to other core meta bosses) or are looking to complete achievements or get a specific reward. While the bounties I've seen have mechanics, it isn't yet clear whether they are sufficiently complex to trigger the "challenge for its own sake" incentive. If rewards are deemed insufficient for the effort, that will kill the other incentive.

It seems some people have figured out how to train bounties. I'm not one of them. Joining one may or may not result in learning the ins and outs. That could be a barrier. The world bosses were never hard to figure out. Players stumble onto them, and what's needed is clearly conveyed or easily figured out.

Placing "harder" content in the persistent world is a tricky proposition. A lot of people don't deal with failure very well, particularly when success is not something they can control. Some players who know what to do get frustrated by other players who don't.

Players being downed or defeated by a mechanic that is opaque to them can easily get frustrated. At the Queen Worm event last night, there were 1-2 dozen people downed (then revived, then down again) for most of the fight. The ley overload (?) DoT is not transparent. People whose experience is frustrating because something is killing them they and they know neither what it is nor what to do about it is not going to make them want to come back. That's the caveat of harder content. It isn't hard if there is no possibility of failure, so the threat of failure is necessary. The actuality of failure, on the other hand, is not generally going to be received well.

Your suggestions sound good as far as setup goes. If those changes were made, it might help. I suspect, though, that rewards are going to prove to be the key issue.

Tip for completing bounties: If there's not an active bounty train with a tag on the map, go find another map that has one.

It's never been a problem for me, I've killed almost every bounty and gotten the achievements for them quite easily, because there are always tons of bounty squads going. You just need to use the LFG menu to find them for the zone you're looking for. If you seek to grab a bounty by yourself, and then call people to it, then yeah it will probably be more difficult to get it done because everybody is doing bounty rotation squads. It's not ideal, and after a few months they may need to make them easier, or change up rewards or something to keep enticing people to them, who knows, but as of right now they're pretty easy to get done if you look.

@Rauderi.8706 said:...So why is it pulling teeth to get people to show up for them?Is it? Every single one that was called out got people to show when I was in sight.

But besides that, a lot of folks are still focused on (a) completing the story, (b) completing collections (that don't include most of the bounties), or © just exploring. It's early days.

Over the past few days, I'm 0 for 4 on getting them done, and I only got yesterday's bounty daily by hopping in on one to get lucky. Sorry for the click-baity title, but I'm hoping to see some changes in the way Bounties work, and I think they can with a few adjustments.I think you might be letting your personal experience color your perception of what's going on.

Plus, the expac hasn't even been out two weeks. It takes a while for people to understand new mechanics, new events (and where to find them, why they should do them), and generally figure out what stuff is worth their time.

Recommendations:I don't agree with some of these because, again, I think personal experience is coloring perception. Over time, I think we'll find that 2-3 minute warnings, 10 minute timers, and frequent respawns work just fine.

•Make marks map-wide. Perhaps organization time isn't that big of an issue, but players aren't seeing the bounties or playing near bounty boards. A notice of a bounty being started with a map marker on the map might help bring more people in.

That seems reasonable. I've always wondered why we have to be within mini map distance to see events on the world map.

•Cycle bounties faster, especially Legendary ones. The collections have specific bounties in them, and having to wait, ...and wait... ...and wait.. for a bounty to come up only to find that no one is doing it is beyond frustrating. The quiet periods on bounties needs to be much shorter.They seem to cycle much fast unless one fixates on a specific bounty. I think the 'efficient' strategy is going to be to do a bunch in a row with the same squad.

•Rewards? Are players not showing up because the rewards and cheap? Just covering my bases on questions here, but perhaps that's an issue. The only reason I'd ever start Corrupted Facet is for the mount collection.

There are other rewards; we just haven't figured them out yet. (It might turn out that's still not enough to work on the trickier bounties, but again, it's early days.)

Bounties are a success because HoT metas consistently blocked off important areas for exploration and story progression. There's a middle ground, to be sure, for map wide meta events, such as the one to go near the mouth of torment in the desolation, and they've done those as well, but Heart of Thorns metas were a disaster for anyone who wasn't interested in them because you wereforced to either join in or wait a half hour until the entire event was done to get to important story places.

I think bounties are a success in that regard, not a failure. For anyone who wants a challenge, bounties exist with interesting mechanics. The scaling may be broken, but tweaking the numbers on scaling, rewards and timings should fix the majority of issues bounties, while leaving open spaces for those who don't like them to ignore them as they please or, if they become interested, join at their own will, while leaving the important and core aspects of exploration free from being locked behind a meta.

It's also great that there isn't much storytelling behind them because HoT style metas need to die. Not metas as a concept, not even metas that call upon large numbers of players, but specifically HoT metas that prevent people from going forward into the game with threadbare plots barely related to the story that block access to entire sections of the map or suddenly make those sections impassible to anyone who's not with an entire army. There is minimalistic story, in that we as the commander are dealing with the creatures who have been empowered by leyline energy from the magical instability of the world as a result of our actions since the beginning of the game (which btw is really interesting as a concept).

And don't even get me started on Dragon's stand.

Every single time I need a specific bounty, I put up an LFG with a description of what bounty it is and why I want to kill it, then I announce in map chat. Usually within a minute or two I get at least 4-5 other people joining me. I play mainly OCX and SEA times. Perhaps your timezone just happened to be particularly dead because most of the people during that timezone prefer other game modes?

Quite often the people coming don't even need the bounties themselves. I mean if I look at my own behaviour, I've killed corrupted Facet 6 or so times. Obviously I only need it once for the collection. Once I was just in the area and the bounty was up so I joined in, the other 4 times I was helping strangers who needed it who clearly did not have enough numbers.

There is a lot of ??? when it comes to bounties.

1) When does the timer start? When the first person takes it from the wall?

2) Do I only get credit (MP, etc) if I have the ticket from the board or is that just to say where it is?

3) Why should I do them after getting the MP? (which only seems to be in Oasis?)

They come across to me as a half-baked idea that was never explained properly.

@phor.7952 said:I believe the clock already doesn't begin until a player with a bounty enters the area where the bounty spawns.Unfortunately a lot of players just go grab a bounty, spawn the mob, and then discover it's not something they can do on their own, so timers are often started inadvertantly. I don't know that starting the timer on the engage would fix that, though it certainly wouldn't hurt.

Being able to see activated bounties map-wide would be nice, but I think it all comes down to rewards.A couple pieces of un-ID'd gear, Karma, and a few Trade Contracts just isn't enough.

The only groups I ever see trying to complete the bounties are just doing one bounty from each region to get the mastery points, then they bail.The rewards need to be on par with the gold/hr of Silverwastes RIBA if they want bounties to be a regular activity.

Incorrect. The Bounty will spawn if at least one player has taken the Bounty and any player wandering within a certain radius of its spawn location will activate the Bounty and its timer. In other words, it's a very flawed system that, as recommended above, needs to change. I mean, we've had the Guild Bounty system from way before! Let these Targets spawn with some icon above their head, not start the Bounty timer until somebody with the Bounty interacts with the Target and voila!

There are other issues I've seen with Bounties, and events in PoF in general. First and foremost, PoF maps are huge (and I love it), but that also means it feels like an extra bother to drop what you're doing halfway across the map to attend something else, unless it's related to some achievement or other.

Secondly, PoF in general gives crazy good loot from every nook and lonely cranny. Doing an event train, opening Trader's Caches, or even digging up Buried Chests can make you a decent amount of gold The problem is that they all feel, and look the same. Compare this with the meta events people are pining over. At the end of Auric Basin, you get to run through a massive treasure room looting like you're a British archaeologist. At the end of the Chakk Gerent event, you get a smaller treasure room, but still several chests your character has to stop and open. Complete Dragon's stand, and you're off to each camp hacking at Noxious Pods. The loot may be comparable, or even better in PoF, it doesn't have the dopamine kick of the visual and audio feedback of opening HoT loot chests, most especially since that "item acquisition" pop up on the right has been largely useless for many years.

Finding a group is certainly not hard, so not sure where the gripe is there. I will agree that most are just a zergfest with little to no challenge and the rewards prove that case.

I find bounty trains all the time. Sadly, I don't find good bounty commanders all the time. They start up a bounty train, and then rush madcap to the bounty while everyone else tries to keep up, usually taking some super cool. highly improbable path to get there, resulting in further delays for some participants. Some commanders will also link the WP they intend to go to even when that's not the WP they'll go to next. For the love of god, stop linking WPs until you're sure which WP is the one.

Also, the game really needs to be more vigorous about placing people in squads into the same map 100% of the time. I can see if a map if simply full, but every time I or some other players load into a map as we waypoint ourselves to death (see above) where we're not in the same map, the map I then have to manually "join" isn't full. Ever. Why would the game not have this simple wicket? In squad? Load into same map. Every. Single. Time. Please.

Bounties as they are right now, are a fail.

First thing first, Bounties should get split up into difficulty types and scale up and down accordingly based on the amount of plyers that want to participate in the huntThere need to be bounties, for all kinds of players.

• Solo Bounties, which become more challenging as you rise up in your Bounty Hunter Ranks which are enemies in the open when that when you spawn them, then only you can deal damage to them, nobody else, specific content for Solo Players in regard of bounties should same as much exist, as like those that are Group Content

• Group Bounties should be basically the classical Champions that are desaigned also as group Battles, which can scale up and down to maximum 10 players which can participate in these kinds of battles , when they are part of a group that has tagged an enemy as their bounty by taking the bounty sheet from the wall.

• Raid Bounties are the kind of Champion to legendary Bountie,s where simply everyone can participate

Bounties need to be content, which will be attrative to all kinds of players, not only to zerg players which farm them like champ trains non stop and if you are not on siuch a map, where currently a squad is making bounties, then you are basicalyl out of luck and can't do anything in the maps that feels kind of rewarding..cause the silly normal events are all just a waste of time compared to bounty hunts.

Bounty Hunts need to receive unique rewards. Each Bounty Hunt Monster should drop 1 unique item, be it a unique skin weapon, an armor part, a tonic, a miniature, an accessoire ect. pp, that just only that one single bounty hunt enemy can drop, if you have luck, cause then have people a reason to constantly do all of the bounties, if they have all some unique rare treasures to drop of similar rarity like the exotic rare drops of the treasure hunter achievement, whose little events peopel still farm daily until now, just to get the chance to get that once exotic rare item dropped that is like 200-400 gold worth, or eventually very rarely even a precursor from the reward chest at the end.

It would also help alot, if these bounties would give also a rare chance of dropping supreme runes of holding. find it a bad joke, that the only way of obtainign them is currently from ecto gambling in PoF!!! Bounties should drop them eventually as a reward as well if your lucky. You need like 21 of them if you want to craft just 1 single 32 slot bag and each of them is jurrently liek 15-20G worth, so thats over 300-420 Gold just to upgrade one single bag from 20 to 32 slots - absolutely ridiculous, when a 20 slot bag can be obtained for like 10G and some material costs.Remember the unique green loot from GW1 and how bosses had all there a unique chance to let their unique loot drop for you?Thats what I think shoudl be done for Bounties. Add a new Weapon Category - Epic Weapons/Armors, which are same as powerful as Ascended Weapons/Armors, have unique skins and can be attribute changed like Legendaries, but they have no auras and no foot step effects like legendaries, and can drop very rarely from bounties.If Anet woudl add somethign like that, I'm pretty sure, people would swarm from everywhere to PoF. Epic Weapons could have then the Weapon Color Dark Green to basically be the similarity of Unique high end Items from GW1

@Menadena.7482 said:There is a lot of ??? when it comes to bounties.

1) When does the timer start? When the first person takes it from the wall?

2) Do I only get credit (MP, etc) if I have the ticket from the board or is that just to say where it is?

3) Why should I do them after getting the MP? (which only seems to be in Oasis?)

They come across to me as a half-baked idea that was never explained properly.

The timer starts as soon the one with the bounty thingy from the board gets close to the destination. Everybody who helps kill it gets credit for it.

If you want to do it a safeway, announce you go for X bounty and link a wp/poi nearby so people can gather up, then you start it.

I agree with OP points. It's not always you are on a bounty train, these large maps honestly are looking really empty. Whether the train has moved to a different map zone or if it's on a different instance, or simply not the time of day where most players and active commanders are on. The megaserver and instance system seems to perform really differently on these large maps and it honestly seems like there are a lot less players because the population allowed is split up on diff instances. It worked for smaller maps but it's not the same on POF maps. Anyway i agree with the op, more map wide transparency would help

It's not a failure. It's just a new mechanic we're all getting used to. Last night I jumped into back-to-back bounties in Desolation. Both were super fun. I like the bounty system since it allows players to control when Legendaries spawn; something that was a nightmare to deal with in HOTs.

I already completed all bounties at least once, always easy to get a squad going for a full bounty map run.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:But besides that, a lot of folks are still focused on (a) completing the story, (b) completing collections (that don't include most of the bounties), or © just exploring. It's early days.

This. At least from my perspective, this. I'm certainly interested in doing a bounty train, if only to get the associated achieves since I don't tend to chase loot for its own sake. But first I want to complete all the maps on my squishy main, get the griffon, test out elites, run the story again on some alts to try less squishy ones and to get more story achieves ... I might decide a bounty train sounds fun if I spot one while not involved in something else, but there are so very many something elses to be involved in for now :)

Give it time. I'm sure it will be doable, especially with the aid of LFG.

I can't even finish the bounty collection since the wintergust bounty is still disabled for some reason.

Bounties have only one problem. rewards are a joke.

Bounties seem fine. I've had fun doing them in small groups (3-5). I think rewards for them may be an issue, but that seems like it'll always be the case for a new feature in a new expansion.

They are quite boring actually. After you do a train on each map to get the associated achievements, what's the point in doing them again? The rewards suck. They are not epic such as HOT metas (which POF Sorely needs for replayability). Now that I have explored the maps, done the specialty collection on a few characters, have map completion on a few characters, got the griffin - what else does POF have to offer?

@Rauderi.8706 said:•Rewards? Are players not showing up because the rewards and cheap? Just covering my bases on questions here, but perhaps that's an issue. The only reason I'd ever start Corrupted Facet is for the mount collection.

^ This. I did a bounty train yesterday and was seriously disappointed with the rewards. I could have spent less time doing the octovine and received much better stuff.