Locking mounts behind group events = bad for late-comers

[jayill.2618]

Been trying to get this for weeks Open Skies: Elon Riverlands acheivement done for the griffon mount and it's difficult to find enough people to get this event going. I guess the early birds got the wurm and the rest of us will just have to get lucky at prime time.

[Hashberry.4510]

Lol I just helped a guildy do the library and said nope to griffon for a while. I can't stand these silly hoops they want us to jump through.

[mrauls.6519]

Getting griffon and beetle were major PITA

[Cyninja.2954]

While I agree that required group events can be difficult especially later down the road when a majority of the player base has completed them, the megaserver system allows enough funneling of players for success.

It does require more personal action and some waiting, or joining a guild and/or community. We have had multiple people do the griffin collection the last 2 weeks in one of my guilds. Some new players, others on their second accounts while helping out.

While I personally appreciate the vast solo content offered in today's MMO landscape, I do wonder how this increasing "I play an MMO solo" mentality affects these type of games.

Suffice to say: having some content encourage (even force) players into grouping up with others can be a benefit for an MMO, even if some players treat it as a glorified single player game.

Edit: along those lines, I have been often outspoken about improving the grouping ability and overview for players to ease such content.

[jayill.2618]

I agree Cyninja. I think a lot of the problem is that there are too many games, servers, things to do, in a theme park type mmo that spreads the content over wide areas and with a thinning population you kind of have to make a lot of solo content because of it. The more content you make, the more you spread out your base, the more difficult group content becomes. Dungeon groups are practically non-existant due to newer content and their drops are obsolete. Personally, i believe making expansion content and forcing your player base out of older content makes it difficult for newer people without the extra content and forces them to purchase newer content, a ploy most certainly.

[Yargesh.4965]

I did it twice in the past week, it is not as hard as I thought it would be in Elon. When you see the escort tag up with a mentor tag and ask for help in map chat. it does not always get a response but I took less than two days each try to get the bone keep and I was really lucky with the djinn with others wanting it as well. As for the library don't take on the elites you have trouble with. I found the ones on the bottom outer ring (where the chests are anyway) where much easier for the most part than the ones in the center. Did everything solo in that I did not have a group doing anything other than group events.EDIT: when I say 2 days I don't mean 48 hours just sitting and waiting. I mean go to the map, find if the escort is going then mentor up or if not (or if you fail the escort) go to the Djinn and see what is happening there. If everything crashes find eggs or do the armour hunt. Then go see where the escort is keeping an eye all the time on map chat since people other than you call out to do those things as well. If you don't have luck log out of that character and do something else.

[ProtoGunner.4953]

I usually do such stuff early, but when I am rather late I just tag up and use LFG - or I join an LFG. Never had problems.

[Ayakaru.6583]

Most group events are easily doable with 5-10 people.Just make an LFG post, ask for some hands in the guild.

The gryffon is a good mount, some effort is ecpected into acquiring it.

[Khisanth.2948]

@Ayakaru.6583 said:Most group events are easily doable with 5-10 people.Just make an LFG post, ask for some hands in the guild.

The gryffon is a good mount, some effort is ecpected into acquiring it.

Overestimating the numbers required is a common problem. Only a handful of stuff actually requires large numbers.

[Ben K.6238]

I tend to find that the group events for the griffon are the only ones that actually get done. There's a few tied to more miscellaneous achievements that you'd probably be waiting weeks for nowadays.

[Turkeyspit.3965]

I got my Griff about 7-8 months ago (?) and I had zero problems with any of the meta events. I did need to call out on /m and put up my mentor tag, but shortly thereafter I had lots of people around me.

I got my Beetle around end of December. The only issue I had was the Alpha bug in Silverwastes, as nobody goes up there, and everyone on the map already is busy with RIBA. I logged my character out there and when I logged back in, was lucky enough to see 3 other people making their way to kill the bug. Each and every other meta requirement for collection was well populated.

As @Ben K.6238 said above, you're likely to find great difficulty with some map challenges in PoF and Season 4 metas (Sandswept, etc). HoT and Core maps all appear to be very well populated (IMO anyways)

[Maulclaw.4365]

I haven't gotten the gryphon and doubt I ever will. It's a huge waste of time, especially now that the maps are dead.

[MinervaPiton.2097]

@"RandomWolf.3986" said:I haven't gotten the gryphon and doubt I ever will. It's a huge waste of time, especially now that the maps are dead.

If gold is not a problem, then you are missing a GREAT mount, I did the full collection within two days for my wife's account (last sat and sunday) and it took some time of waiting but the maps were not dead and she LOVES so no time wasted if I enjoy playing the game

[Maulclaw.4365]

@MinervaPiton.2097 said:

@"RandomWolf.3986" said:I haven't gotten the gryphon and doubt I ever will. It's a huge waste of time, especially now that the maps are dead.

If gold is not a problem, then you are missing a GREAT mount, I did the full collection within two days for my wife's account (last sat and sunday) and it took some time of waiting but the maps were not dead and she LOVES so no time wasted if I enjoy playing the game

Gold has become a problem for me, especially nowadays. I always had second thoughts about this mount and I just can't find it in me to even bother at this point. Waiting isn't exactly an option anymore with work / college right around the corner and no people to help me out.

[kharmin.7683]

@"RandomWolf.3986" said:Waiting isn't exactly an option anymore with work / college right around the corner and no people to help me out.Sorry for your luck, but honestly this problem is on you. Many have already pointed out methods to get others to help and have had success as recently as this last weekend it seems. Maybe it's due to the time you're logging on?

[otto.5684]

@"mrauls.6519" said:Getting griffon and beetle were major PITA

That’s why I never bothered. Too much grinding.

[Cerioth.7062]

Cause secret special mounts should be acquired with ease and no effort put in them right?

[Cuks.8241]

I just asked in map chat and got a few people right away. That was a few weeks ago. I wouldn't say POF maps are dead. I really didn't have an issue at all. If you just play the POF maps you constantly see people LFG for the griffon events.

[BlueJin.4127]

I got my griffon and beetle mounts in the past few months and they’re not hard to get at all. There are still tons of players that are still working on them, and even more players doing the required group activities or willing to help. Currently, the issue isn’t that late comers do not have enough players to do these group events with; it’s simply that first timers will not know how to easily get groups for these and spend days or even weeks stuck. I don't know how many times I encountered players stuck on some collections for weeks (one even claimed to be stuck for months), when it took me or some other players minutes to help set up a group.

For griffon’s legendary Facet, there are usually bounty trains in LFG (check all PoF maps). There are usually several bounty runs a day. Simply join the group and ask for help. If the player doesn’t want to wait a couple of hours for a bounty train listing to appear, he can always start his own group requesting help to get griffon, put it in LFG, and announce in map chat. A group of 10 random players should be able to beat the Facet with ease, unless they get hit with a bad combination of unstable magic abilities.

For Deadhouse, just look at the map for a commander icon. Like bounty trains, there are usually several runs a day.

For beetle collection’s alpha beetle, join a populated Silverwastes map. Players may have to join a RIBA map and wait until Vinewrath is dead so players are not busy. Ask in map for help with beetle collection. To get the alpha beetle to spawn, first, you need to beat the event in the Far Silverwastes area if it’s up. If the event is not up, go to the north/west corner of the Far Silverwastes. You’ll see a bunch of green beetles surrounding a single attackable beetle. Kill the lone attackable beetle (you may have to kill this beetle several times) and the alpha beetle will spawn on that spot. The alpha beetle can be soloed if you learn its attacks. For players who are not willing to take the time to learn to solo it, it can be easily killed with 2 or 3 players.

For the Ley-Line Anomaly, check “event timers” on wiki and use the LFG tool. It helps to get on during prime time and get into map a few minutes in advance.

[ReaverKane.7598]

The problem is less the mounts, but more the rest... PoF Maps are all forgettable, except for Istan, due to it's meta, you really don't have reasons to go back. They just made matters worse by making everything more expensive (which will keep some players in the maps, but most will just be discouraged and not even attempt the content).Arena Net has completely foregone retention to just keep us busy with the next shiny. Problem is, the shiny isn't enough to keep people playing.Speaking personally, i have played less hours these last 6 months than one weekend of 2015. There's nothing in it for me... I mean yeah i could do the next legendary, if i liked them...And this is one of the problems, these legendaries should have been shipped 2 years ago. They should be on set 3. They've lowered their standards so much, and still don't deliver the content that would keep people playing at a good enough pace.Current events, which was their best idea since HoT, are pretty much a shadow of their old selves, the living world episodes (which are by far the best content they've done in the last 3+ years) are done with in a few hours leaving a few meaningless achievements for the rest of the duration.Gone are jumping puzzles, gone are scavenger hunts, gone are rewards that made us want to get them.

... Oh Rant....

Well TLDR: The problem is less the way mounts are unlocked (although beetle being under paid content brought it's own issues), but more that they can't retain players in the areas where you want them to be to unlock mounts.

[DaFishBob.6518]

I'll say this much about Leyline Anomaly, you don't even have to finish the event successfully! You just have to follow the thing around until it blows up on its own according to players after events that have failed so that's one event you won't need to worry about.

[Tai Kratos.3247]

I'm stuck on the bounties / group events as well, and I can't seem to get past it. People make lots of suggestions, but few are helpful:

• Use the LFG - Nobody is making groups for bounties / Griffon collection events. I've made my own groups, and nobody joins.
• Join a Guild - I never joined a guild in GW1 and I haven't in this game. I think I should be able to play the game how I want. This isn't about being "antisocial" or playing the game solo, because I do play with people. But I just don't join guilds, and I don't think something as central as a flying mount should be barred behind joining an active guild.

I tried asking people in a map for help, nobody responded. I even triggered an event right next to a commander tag on a populated map. People just ran around the event and ignored it. So I can't ask beforehand and get help to start the event, and I can't start the event and hope people join. Neither seems effective.

If they like having major parts locked behind group events, they should at least offer some sort of long-winded second path to get the item. Like, charge me lots of gold for it or something. Sure, that's also a terrible solution, but at least I know I can reliably get it at some point.

[gateless gate.8406]

I'm a new-ish player that recently got all my mounts, including the beetle and griffon. I had zero problems. In fact, I got my entire griffon collection done in one afternoon and one morning.

Use the LFG, use mapchat, ask your guilds... and then wait. Yes, it may take 15 minutes to get your first helper for one of these events. Those seeking instant gratification and instant rewards may have to stick to the raptor. It is a fine mount for any level of player.

[Ayakaru.6583]

No, effort is never bad for quality rewards.What anet should do is, at some point consider if the event requires too big groups, and nerf the event to be doable with a small group.But anet should never remove the difficulty

[Yargesh.4965]

@Ayakaru.6583 said:No, effort is never bad for quality rewards.What anet should do is, at some point consider if the event requires too big groups, and nerf the event to be doable with a small group.But anet should never remove the difficulty

I did the bonehouse with 5 and the djinn with 2 in Elon so I don't know how much smaller of a group ANET would be willing to go to.