Leeching and kill stealing in the PoF meta

[Leablo.2651]

Something should be done about the large masses of people who deliberately arrive late to a meta just to take the daily chest reward. In particular, the Legendary boss at the Maws of Torment doesn't scale past a certain point and the dozens of leechers who wait by the spawn point don't wait for the people who did the actual work to catch up. I've had to do this with groups that only had 5 in squad and a handful of others. We had so few people doing the work that the squad had to participate in all 3 of the portal spikes. Yet the instant that the boss spawned there were 3 other commander tags, with what seemed like several dozen random people, and they took the kill before some of the meta squad could get out. (There were still leftover mobs and barriers in the lanes slowing people down.) It's especially noteworthy considering that without groups such as mine, pugs generally don't run this meta. There are people who, every day, maybe every 2 hours, are checking LFG specifically to see if there is a meta squad that they can leech from. They won't bother going to the Desolation otherwise. It's incredible.

Simple fix suggestion: Spawn teleporters from the realm portals to the boss area to ensure that those who did the work will get to participate in the big reward event. This fixes the most egregious problem of the only deserving players being deprived of the rewards.

Better implementation: Move the Hero's Choice chests to equivalent Crystal Desert Daily achievements, with each event in the respective meta a required objective to complete the achievement. This ensures that those who want the big reward will have to show up on time and help with the pre-events, which will help more of those events run in the first place.

[Ayrilana.1396]

Many of those players are likely coming from AB as that's part of the daily rotation for those farming their daily gemstones. As for getting to the final boss of the meta in time, why not WP? I've done the lane events numerous times and you're never stuck in combat after beating the lane boss. It takes half the time to get to it than it would to come from the lane boss area. Actually, less depending on which lane boss. That boss is also typically up for about 2-3 min before it's killed which is more than enough time to run to it from any of the lane boss locations.

Yes, it's annoying to put most of the work in a meta while others leech but that's how Anet created dynamic events in this game. I can't see them making an exception to one. Pretty much the only options are to accept it, ignore it, or do the same. That's the choice I had to make years ago.

[Khisanth.2948]

How are you having trouble making it there in time? O_o

There is plenty of time even while I run around to loot the chest from the other two lanes before heading over to the legendary ...

[Zaraki.5784]

It's not just PoF, it's the same for HoT metas (except Dragon's Stand) and many World Bosses on core Tyria, it's always been this way and it will likely not change.

[crepuscular.9047]

they are on meta farm trains, in fact it is them who is keeping the maps to look 'populated'

it's usually <30sec to get to Legendary Forged Demolisher from The Darklands WP after finishing Maw, so I'm unsure what took you so long, the Legendary Forged Demolisher does not die quicker with more people until it hits a certain population threshold to reach its scaling cap

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@"Leablo.2651" said:Something should be done about the large masses of people who deliberately arrive late to a meta just to take the daily chest reward.Why? That seems punitive rather than cooperative.

the squad had to participate in all 3 of the portal spikes.I'm okay with that. A lot of people are trying to get achievements associated with those spikes.

Better implementation: Move the Hero's Choice chests to equivalent Crystal Desert Daily achievements, with each event in the respective meta a required objective to complete the achievement.That sounds terrible to me. HoT used the participation mechanic to try the same thing and it ended up being incredibly annoying and got scrapped. It didn't prevent leeching and it did hurt legit contributors.

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I think there's far too much attention on leeching already. I don't care if someone gets to share a reward for which I spent more time/energy. I don't think the game should attempt to decide whether someone participated the "right way," short of what it already does: do some damage, preferably while in a group, to the boss and relevant adds.

If ANet is going to focus on misbehaving players, I'd rather they spent their time on folks that get in the way. Make it harder to slow/interrupt opening chests (e.g. due to ports or toys/gizmos), turn off scaling for defeated players (or waypoint them), target those who break rules in WvW and PvP.

But 25 people coming from a meta train to join in the last event in my event chain? Bring 'em. The more the merrier.

[Obtena.7952]

This hasn't been a problem for 7 years ....

... and it's part of the selling point of the game.

Nothing needs to be done.