Will Pay You to Leave the Zone

[Gibson.4036]

I've read about this happening, but last night was the first time I encountered it personally.

For the hour of preparation in Dragon's End, a player was periodically offering compensation to leave the zone. They did so politely, and left enough time between offers that it did not feel excessively spammy. I don't blame them at all. They're merely employing a strategy that makes sense in response to the way Dragon's End was designed.

I'd like to hear from ArenaNet about this, though.

You set out to create a game where players aren't unhappy to see other players. What a great goal we celebrated with you back when you were laying out the vision for GW2.

Now, here, 10 years later, what do you think about people buying other players out of the grand finale meta? Are you okay that this is what has resulted from its design? Do you have any plans in response?

[Fuchslein.8639]

9 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

I've read about this happening, but last night was the first time I encountered it personally.

For the hour of preparation in Dragon's End, a player was periodically offering compensation to leave the zone. They did so politely, and left enough time between offers that it did not feel excessively spammy. I don't blame them at all. They're merely employing a strategy that makes sense in response to the way Dragon's End was designed.

I'd like to hear from ArenaNet about this, though.

You set out to create a game where players aren't unhappy to see other players. What a great goal we celebrated with you back when you were laying out the vision for GW2.

Now, here, 10 years later, what do you think about people buying other players out of the grand finale meta? Are you okay that this is what has resulted from its design? Do you have any plans in response?

 

Do people actually pay for this?
I Read that the eod-meta reward is garbage and now that you can buy the turtle-egg, why would someone care?

Sure, its sad, but its not the only meta what anet set to fail. Pof *cough*.

[Embered.5089]

This is necessary for the meta to succeed. The map has a cap of 60 players, and a squad holds 50. Some people use 3 squads, 20 people in each.

Usually when you're being asked to leave, you are also welcomed to join their squad to help with the meta. If you both refuse to join the squad and refuse to leave the instance, then you are actively preventing the meta's success. The commander offering you gold to leave is merely trying to help ensure a win for the 50-60 people relying on him. He's not buying you out of the "grand finale meta". He's buying you out of failing it for everyone in the map. Most of these groups, again, will welcome you into the squad if you follow their guidelines.

You do not have to leave DE entirely. You can leave for a few minutes, until your instance slot reservation is cancelled (not sure about the exact time, around 2 minutes?) and then return so you're in a different DE instance. Then you can continue doing what you were doing in DE without affecting any meta groups.

DE is not the only map where the entire map is expected to cooperate. Dragon's End, Dragonfall, Drizzlewood Coast, and Silverwastes are some maps that I can think of which require the entire map's coordination. DE is a little more extreme in that there's fewer map slots and the fight is less forgiving, thus requiring more coordination and voice chat.

[Bookah pls.9352]

How much where they offering? 

EoD Meta's really aren't profitable enough to be paying other people to leave the map

[Gibson.4036]

15 minutes ago, Embered.5089 said:

This is necessary for the meta to succeed. The map has a cap of 60 players, and a squad holds 50. Some people use 3 squads, 20 people in each.

Usually when you're being asked to leave, you are also welcomed to join their squad to help with the meta. If you both refuse to join the squad and refuse to leave the instance, then you are actively preventing the meta's success. The commander offering you gold to leave is merely trying to help ensure a win for the 50-60 people relying on him. He's not buying you out of the "grand finale meta". He's buying you out of failing it for everyone in the map. Most of these groups, again, will welcome you into the squad if you follow their guidelines.

I totally get why people are doing it, and don't think there's anything to hold against them when they do it politely, as I experienced.

I'd like to know how ArenaNet feels about where their choices have lead the game, and if they have any ideas or plans in response.

15 minutes ago, Bookah pls.9352 said:

How much where they offering? 

EoD Meta's really aren't profitable enough to be paying other people to leave the map

I wondered about this myself. I didn't really want to specify, because it's a bit off the point I made the thread for, and didn't want it to get derailed into a debate about what the appropriate amount would be. It was significantly less than the going price for an Antique Summoning Stone, though.

 

Edited April 1, 2022 by Gibson.4036

[vares.8457]

2 minutes ago, Bookah pls.9352 said:

How much where they offering? 

EoD Meta's really aren't profitable enough to be paying other people to leave the map

Exactly. We don’t know if this story is true. I have seen commanders asking others to leave the map but I have never seen anyone offering to pay them to leave. 

[Rumpus.1234]

12 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

Now, here, 10 years later, what do you think about people buying other players out of the grand finale meta?

Generally good questions but this is completely wrong. Commanders ask people to leave if they aren't participating in the grand finale meta (fishing, mining, collecting achievements).

[Gibson.4036]

3 minutes ago, Rumpus.1234 said:

Generally good questions but this is completely wrong. Commanders ask people to leave if they aren't participating in the grand finale meta (fishing, mining, collecting achievements).

That wasn't what I saw. The offer stated that they had a full squad they wanted to get in, and if people would leave and direct message them, they would be sent compensation.

And even without compensation, asking people to leave the map wouldn't fit with the original vision of the game either.

5 minutes ago, vares.8457 said:

Exactly. We don’t know if this story is true. I have seen commanders asking others to leave the map but I have never seen anyone offering to pay them to leave. 

Well, if I was making up the whole thing, couldn't I just make up a price, too? Not sure how that would help verify.

Edited April 1, 2022 by Gibson.4036

[Bookah pls.9352]

7 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

I wondered about this myself. I didn't really want to specify, because it's a bit off the point I made the thread for, and didn't want it to get derailed into a debate about what the appropriate amount would be. It was significantly less than the going price for a Antique Summoning Stone, though.

 

kitten there goes my hopping around dragons end maps selling my slots for gold idea then

[Rumpus.1234]

10 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

That wasn't what I saw. The offer stated that they had a full squad they wanted to get in, and if people would leave and direct message them, they would be sent compensation.

Then that's outside my experience. A few near-daily DE squads try recruiting people first, then offer rewards to make room if they have late arrivals from their guild or discord, and there's always a few players left on the map outside of the squad. This has resulted in (one example) 38 consistent DE wins.

Of course if there's money changing hands, anet's goal will be to get their 15% cut.

[Raknar.4735]

10 minutes ago, Bookah pls.9352 said:

kitten there goes my hopping around dragons end maps selling my slots for gold idea then

Still would be passive income, if you aren't actively doing something / just fishing  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Edited April 1, 2022 by Raknar.4735

[Erise.5614]

It happens. Less now but it's not a myth. Have seen it happen in a run where our commander was doing it. And have been offered gold before as well.

Usually it's guilds / discord communities trying to fill up a map with their own people. So it's less about maximizing profit (seriously, why would one run DE for that?) but more to help people within their community get the turtle as special event.

Quite a few guilds have deliberate budgets for these kinds of things from member donations. So you might compare it to guild hall races with prizes as a special, self organized event. 

[Danikat.8537]

As long as they ask politely and can't actually force people out of the map I don't think it's a problem. If they're rude or aggressive, either when asking or when someone refuses, then that is a problem and Anet should deal with it (via someone reporting them and Anet acting on the report).

I've seen people asking for everyone in the map to come and help with an event in many different places over the years. This is obviously a slightly different approach but it comes to the same thing.

Having said that I do think Anet should increase the population cap on this map. I've heard they deliberately set them lower than normal for all the PoF maps to minimise problems with lag during the launch, but I think now it would be worth increasing them, especially for this map.

[kharmin.7683]

What guarantee is there that a player will actually get paid to leave the map?

What guarantee that a player will actually leave the map once paid?

I can see this as a potential problem that CS tickets won't solve.

[Gibson.4036]

4 minutes ago, kharmin.7683 said:

What guarantee is there that a player will actually get paid to leave the map?

What guarantee that a player will actually leave the map once paid?

I can see this as a potential problem that CS tickets won't solve.

I expect the official answer is that any trading done outside the TP is a buyer beware sort of situation. I understand that has been ArenaNet's stance all the way back to GW1 with selling runs through difficult instances, for example.

[Witch of Doom.5739]

Can we pay with the brand new shiny ACoin™ ??  Probably good today only, April 1st.  https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/ACoin   😄

Edited April 1, 2022 by Witch of Doom.5739

[Doo Lally.8594]

1 hour ago, vares.8457 said:

Exactly. We don’t know if this story is true. I have seen commanders asking others to leave the map but I have never seen anyone offering to pay them to leave. 

Had an offer of either Gold or T6 mats from a very polite Commander last week.

 

Didn't take it, wasn't offended and replied back that I would be off the map in 5 minutes. We parted with him offering to let me in to his next squad at any time.

 

Very civilised but still not what I expect Anet had as a vision for their EoD signature event.

[Hashberry.4510]

1 hour ago, Gibson.4036 said:

You set out to create a game where players aren't unhappy to see other players. What a great goal we celebrated with you back when you were laying out the vision for GW2

Jeez this vision was ripped up years ago.

[Ashantara.8731]

That's just insane.

Especially when the squad is on voice chat, there are easy ways to get everyone on the same instance: jump on the map at the same time, and if people end up on different instances check the progress level and whether there are other tags on the map, then have everyone hop on the least populated instance.

Edited April 1, 2022 by Ashantara.8731

[Wonderly.1324]

1 hour ago, Gibson.4036 said:

That wasn't what I saw. The offer stated that they had a full squad they wanted to get in, and if people would leave and direct message them, they would be sent compensation.

And even without compensation, asking people to leave the map wouldn't fit with the original vision of the game either.

Well, if I was making up the whole thing, couldn't I just make up a price, too? Not sure how that would help verify.

 

That is a really interesting conundrum, isn't it? How would you balance "play with your friends" with "happy to see another player" in a world of finite resources? When they designed the game with a focus on the latter vision, the context is that in a world with infinite map spawns, another player coming along and attacking your mob won't deminish your loot or experience, spotting another player harvesting a resource doesn't exclude you from harvesting from that same resource. It was a design concept of pragmatically infinite resources, which is the basis for eliminating competition.

However, turns out it's quite difficult to design challenging content within the context of infinite resources. There exists a demographic of players who enjoy teamwork and cooperation towards a challenging task that has a win condition and a potential failure state. When there's more than one possible outcome (i.e. you won't just "win" no matter what build you bring what you do) then the game truly becomes a game and not a movie, and your actions and interactions with others objectively has an impact that affects the outcome.

In the case of DE, the "finite resource" became the time to complete the event, as well as the spot on the map. How would you design content that caters to 50+ groups of players wanting to work together?

[Gibson.4036]

2 minutes ago, Wonderly.1324 said:

 

In the case of DE, the "finite resource" became the time to complete the event, as well as the spot on the map. How would you design content that caters to 50+ groups of players wanting to work together?

It seems like the simplest solution is to give them an on-demand, private, 50 person instance.

25 minutes ago, Hashberry.4510 said:

Jeez this vision was ripped up years ago.

I get what you're saying.

Perhaps I'm naive, but I'm aware that there is a difference between throwing away a vision and trying, but failing sometimes, to meet it. Maybe I'm wrong. Or maybe there are people at ArenaNet who still believe in that vision, but miss it in excecution some times.

 

Edited April 1, 2022 by Gibson.4036

[Wonderly.1324]

Just now, Gibson.4036 said:

It seems like the simplest solution is to give them an on-demand, private, 50 person instance.

 

Yes, I absolutely agree. That was the first thing that came to my mind as well, and as I'm sure you are aware, not the first time this has been brought up. I'm sure you've also heard, and I'm sure ANET is also aware, if they did this then public instances will never be ran; guild would only ever spawn private instances. So what? Why is that a problem? While I don't necessarily think it's the worst idea, I do believe that ANET has some reason or motive for resisting implamenting this simple solution. Which goes back to answering your origional question. Not speaking for ANET but assuming they are aware of the "issue", and aware of this "simple solution", I would theororize that their goal and vision does not align with the solution.
My theory is that they strive to unify the two groups instead of creating a further divide (which is what private instances would do). This is just a guess, but having lead the event several times, I don't think the event is actually tuned to 60 hard core raiders. I think it's probably tuned to 20-30 organized players who know what they're doing, and can carry (sorry but it's the truth) the rest of the map. My guess is that ANET's goal through this event is to communicate through design that if you are a more... "discerning" gamer and all you've done is follow the story and open world up to Dragon's End, that not all content plays out like a movie, that there does exist content which can benefit from communication, coordination, and teamwork. I believe this event was an attempt to connect certain types of players with like minded individuals, eventually leading them into guilds, raid statics, etc.

[dusanyu.4057]

charge them one turtle egg to leave *lol*

[Erise.5614]

1 hour ago, Wonderly.1324 said:

 

Yes, I absolutely agree. That was the first thing that came to my mind as well, and as I'm sure you are aware, not the first time this has been brought up. I'm sure you've also heard, and I'm sure ANET is also aware, if they did this then public instances will never be ran; guild would only ever spawn private instances. So what? Why is that a problem? While I don't necessarily think it's the worst idea, I do believe that ANET has some reason or motive for resisting implamenting this simple solution. Which goes back to answering your origional question. Not speaking for ANET but assuming they are aware of the "issue", and aware of this "simple solution", I would theororize that their goal and vision does not align with the solution.
My theory is that they strive to unify the two groups instead of creating a further divide (which is what private instances would do). This is just a guess, but having lead the event several times, I don't think the event is actually tuned to 60 hard core raiders. I think it's probably tuned to 20-30 organized players who know what they're doing, and can carry (sorry but it's the truth) the rest of the map. My guess is that ANET's goal through this event is to communicate through design that if you are a more... "discerning" gamer and all you've done is follow the story and open world up to Dragon's End, that not all content plays out like a movie, that there does exist content which can benefit from communication, coordination, and teamwork. I believe this event was an attempt to connect certain types of players with like minded individuals, eventually leading them into guilds, raid statics, etc.

Honestly. No. They must have known it's a bad approach to bridge the gap that's gonna lead to more rather than less toxicity.

My personal suspicion is that a few things happened in parallel.

1. They saw instanced events like Dragonstorm don't do as well. 
   According to GW2 efficiency 50% of accounts started IBS, 30% played Dragonstorm and 15% played Dragonstorm once since October 2021. Just for scale. Each of the individual lanes of Octo have ~70%. 7% have over 100 Octos. Despite a mastery point only 9% did Dragonstorm 10 times. 
2. They overvalued story and Soo Won as a character
   Most mechanics are deeply linked with story aspects (wisps, Aurene calling shots) and Soo Won is a much more fluid and interactive character than we have seen before. But by tying themselves to heavily to story and spectacle they neglected several aspects of usability. E.g. having everyone mostly stack on a single location making visual clutter worse than ever and punishing you worse than ever for having the wrong settings (aka player count not on lowest). Having claw and tail move away entirely from the hitbox for several seconds at a time. Among others.
   Like, I can see what they were going for. But they entered tunnel vision into a really specific aspect of design and neglected other important bits. 
3. They wanted it to be epic
   But in the process of making it a visual spectacle they also confused time spent with the feeling of accomplishment. The entire build up event is too long, mostly uninteresting, not used as opportunity to teach mechanics and, counter to the previous point, actually fairly poorly integrated as a story step. 
   Despite basically expecting the first several attempts of every player to fail it also overcommits to being a super long meta. Which, in combination, was probably not a good choice.
   This reddit comment comes to mind.
4. A few, very impactful bugs, unintended behavior and a lot of patches
   This made it an even more confusing experience and settled the meta on mostly brute force. As everything else is patched out and no proper strategy besides doing everything as fast as possible appears to have any better chances. Is the only streamlined way to play the meta. But causing a lot of confusion along the way in a probably not too great way. There really isn't much to learn or many interesting mechanics. It's just spectacle and "do it fast". Going counter to the previous point. It doesn't feel particularly Epic to just be faster. It cheapens the feeling of accomplishment as you did essentially the same thing as all the other times. Just a little faster. There was nothing to learn, no special trick. Just the squad as a whole wasn't doing the straight forward things fast enough.
   At least if you failed Octo or even Dragon's Stand, you failed mechanics. You didn't split up right, you didn't coordinate timings right, you didn't do the thing.
   DE is just. Yeah. Everything is fine. But do it faster now. Or with better DPS to skip some of the time consuming mechanics. 

If this really was intended as a way to bring different parts of the community together and push people into guilds it was an incredibly ballsy move. One that failed quite badly in several ways. We have the same gatekeeping as always. Either you know how to work within that system or you will have a very bad time on the map. 

Edited April 1, 2022 by Erise.5614

[Gibson.4036]

1 hour ago, Wonderly.1324 said:

 

Yes, I absolutely agree. That was the first thing that came to my mind as well, and as I'm sure you are aware, not the first time this has been brought up. I'm sure you've also heard, and I'm sure ANET is also aware, if they did this then public instances will never be ran; guild would only ever spawn private instances. So what? Why is that a problem? While I don't necessarily think it's the worst idea, I do believe that ANET has some reason or motive for resisting implamenting this simple solution. Which goes back to answering your origional question. Not speaking for ANET but assuming they are aware of the "issue", and aware of this "simple solution", I would theororize that their goal and vision does not align with the solution.
My theory is that they strive to unify the two groups instead of creating a further divide (which is what private instances would do). This is just a guess, but having lead the event several times, I don't think the event is actually tuned to 60 hard core raiders. I think it's probably tuned to 20-30 organized players who know what they're doing, and can carry (sorry but it's the truth) the rest of the map. My guess is that ANET's goal through this event is to communicate through design that if you are a more... "discerning" gamer and all you've done is follow the story and open world up to Dragon's End, that not all content plays out like a movie, that there does exist content which can benefit from communication, coordination, and teamwork. I believe this event was an attempt to connect certain types of players with like minded individuals, eventually leading them into guilds, raid statics, etc.

My apologies, I responded to your question on a hypothetical level, as opposed to specific.

I don't know enough of what the repercussions would be if they went ahead and made an instanced version of DE right now, while also keeping the open world map version to advocate for that. I don't actually have a good idea of the best response to where we've landed.

It occurs to me that they could keep shaving away difficulty on the meta, and players still might be organizing and trying to capture an instance to themselves for a long time to come because that is what has been established, even if it becomes increasingly unnecessary.

I haven't experienced a failed event so far, so I don't have a way to personally gauge its difficulty beyond what I've read from others. So far I've been part of a map that did the pre-events and then abandoned the zone after the initial escorts, and two where I've lucked out on riding along with at least a semi-organized group. Personally, I definitely understood things much better the second time around. The second time I never got downed on the platform. I did get knocked off once, and failed at climbing as a wisp but got much farther than the first time.

Based on that experience, I expect you're right, and an organized group can carry a certain amount of other players.