High level mounts and players make events for non-mount players in zones impossible

[ZenonSeth.5739]

I feel like there's zero chance ANET does anything about this, but I did pay money for this game long ago, I get to complaint. If you have a problem with that, feel free to close the thread and don't read further.

I only have a raptor, and started a new character to get back into the game. But getting to events in time before they are wiped by a bunch of glow in the dark sparkly rainbow dragon high level players is pretty much impossible. And I'm talking regular event chains where one event leads to another - e.g. kill the 3 centaur vets in Kessex hills that leads to a champ spawning just a little further away. Even with a raptor, that champ gets wiped before I can reach it - let alone if i tried to get to one of the bloodstone crazed beasts that spawn halfway across the map. 

I get it, if you want to be competitive, buy all the expansions, grind for the flying mounts and stop complaining - I've heard that argument before. Nice one. Except all that makes me want to do is quit this game and never look back. And don't get me started on how the game looks like its full of glowing clowns with rainbow kitten everywhere. It's so immersion breaking, it's insane. But that's minor compared to the gameplay issues that come from the disadvantage of players even with just the basic mount.

[ShadowKatt.6740]

I feel ya, I really do. Once upon a time, back in the way before (that is, before the Wizards Vault replaced dailies), you would come across the daily "Do 3 events in [Insert Map Here]". Now in general, this wasn't a problem. Most maps have enemies of a decently high level that you can rock it with other people. But whenever you had a "Do 3 events" in Queensdale, Metrica, Caledon, Wayfarer, or Ashford I always tried to plead with the people on those maps to make sure to share. I'm not even a power player but when your enemies are level 3 they die from my mere presence. As a mesmer I can literally let my clones solo an event and they do ZERO damage. So now you throw in a bunch of level 80 players with siege turtles and now siege skyscales and yeah, it's basically impossible.

Now, obviously we have the wizards fault and that daily has been dodo'ed. But the situation hasn't changed. Unfortunately you're right, Anet isn't going to fix this nor can they fix this even if they wanted to. The only solution, and fortunately GW2 has the resources for this, is community. People need to understand that when you're on lower level maps that you don't have to do much for gold level participation. You can dip in, nuke an area with five baddies, and be on your way and you got gold. Not only that, but you leave plenty of the event for other players so they can get gold too. This means that we all have to be a little more selfless, a little more conscientious, and a little more empathetic. And to our credit, we have a communtiy that largely fits that bill. We just need to exercise it a bit more.

[Linken.6345]

13 minutes ago, ShadowKatt.6740 said:

I feel ya, I really do. Once upon a time, back in the way before (that is, before the Wizards Vault replaced dailies), you would come across the daily "Do 3 events in [Insert Map Here]". Now in general, this wasn't a problem. Most maps have enemies of a decently high level that you can rock it with other people. But whenever you had a "Do 3 events" in Queensdale, Metrica, Caledon, Wayfarer, or Ashford I always tried to plead with the people on those maps to make sure to share. I'm not even a power player but when your enemies are level 3 they die from my mere presence. As a mesmer I can literally let my clones solo an event and they do ZERO damage. So now you throw in a bunch of level 80 players with siege turtles and now siege skyscales and yeah, it's basically impossible.

Now, obviously we have the wizards fault and that daily has been dodo'ed. But the situation hasn't changed. Unfortunately you're right, Anet isn't going to fix this nor can they fix this even if they wanted to. The only solution, and fortunately GW2 has the resources for this, is community. People need to understand that when you're on lower level maps that you don't have to do much for gold level participation. You can dip in, nuke an area with five baddies, and be on your way and you got gold. Not only that, but you leave plenty of the event for other players so they can get gold too. This means that we all have to be a little more selfless, a little more conscientious, and a little more empathetic. And to our credit, we have a communtiy that largely fits that bill. We just need to exercise it a bit more.

Was it not 4 events?

[Kiki.9450]

Some improvements have been made in recent years, such as providing a raptor mount to new players (even if it's only temporary until PoF...) and removing the daily "do events in x zone" achievements.

One thing that would be real nice to see is a tuning pass on old content to help address the concerns of the OP and also to help with power creep. Maybe something that only or primarily impacts level 80s in Core through HoT zones. (I don't feel like PoF is too bad yet but maybe others disagree?) 

In regards to players with ungodly appearances, I can suggest going into your settings and turning the Player Model Quality setting to lowest. Sure, your PC can probably handle it running this setting, but making this adjustment replaces everyone else's models (and their mounts!) with generic "shadow people" models, helping to reduce the eye strain a bit. It won't do anything about their weapons, back pieces, floaty blob things, or if they colour themselves red or blue or whatever with infusions, but at least their BRIGHT GLOWING BUTTS won't be so visible.

[Kiki.9450]

2 minutes ago, Linken.6345 said:

Was it not 4 events?

Yes it was.

[Linken.6345]

Btw OP it is even worse now then back in the day as they can just sit in the air shooting fireballs in low level maps making it hard for newer people to progress evens.

[Elricht Kaltwind.8796]

"high-level mounts" lol

[Kiki.9450]

1 minute ago, Elricht Kaltwind.8796 said:

"high-level mounts" lol

Yes as opposed to all the various mounts players can receive prior to level 80 on a permanent basis. To a new player, those are indeed "high level."

[Surelia.2651]

Op, you can try to use the map chat or dm players to let them know you are trying to engage the quest chain.  Sometimes vets are just as single-minded focused on doing hearts as you are, since they may have not done map completion and need to get it done--- but if you don't speak up and at least try to communicate, they won't even know it is an issue.  Many of the sparkly-shiney "clowns" as you call them, are literally quite helpful people; if you bother to talk a bit you might be surprised at the results.  Like it or not, for better or worse, flying mounts and overpowered vets exist in a game this old, so sharing the field is just simply the reality. 

[ShadowCatz.8437]

4 hours ago, Kiki.9450 said:

Some improvements have been made in recent years, such as providing a raptor mount to new players (even if it's only temporary until PoF...) and removing the daily "do events in x zone" achievements.

One thing that would be real nice to see is a tuning pass on old content to help address the concerns of the OP and also to help with power creep. Maybe something that only or primarily impacts level 80s in Core through HoT zones. (I don't feel like PoF is too bad yet but maybe others disagree?) 

In regards to players with ungodly appearances, I can suggest going into your settings and turning the Player Model Quality setting to lowest. Sure, your PC can probably handle it running this setting, but making this adjustment replaces everyone else's models (and their mounts!) with generic "shadow people" models, helping to reduce the eye strain a bit. It won't do anything about their weapons, back pieces, floaty blob things, or if they colour themselves red or blue or whatever with infusions, but at least their BRIGHT GLOWING BUTTS won't be so visible.

We also have a new setting called "Environmental Zone Intensity" below Postprocessing. That slider is best to turn to right to reduce some of the bloom effects (make light diffused or look like more like fog), it probably also have an impact on image sharpness.

Look in Options>Graphic settings to find this setting.

There is also a setting for High Resolution Character model which is a radio button (tick it on or off).

That setting will replace what character model on all character that is defined by Player Model Quality setting (which is range based) in combination with when character will be rendered that are in range from your character.

OP, you have to play around with those setting in Graphic to see what works for you. It is possible that it have more impact then just on annoying Skyscale/Griffon skins and how they will look (or their effects).

 

EDIT: That setting "Environmental Zone Intensity"  haven't yet been documented on GW2 to what is supposed to do, so you, OP, have to try it out. From my own experience it looks like it have a very different impact as it depends on what kind of environment that map have.

Colour scale does also impact how things look (and what can feel annoying to look at). Adjust saturation on your display and in your video card drivers.  

Edited January 17 by ShadowCatz.8437

[KindredPhoenyx.8976]

the issue here isn't the players, it's power creep.

A lot of the high end metas that used to take a decade are now getting absolutely steamrolled-- like end boss of Dragon's Stand. Numbers are overdue a tune down.

Edited January 17 by KindredPhoenyx.8976

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

i think the biggest issue is that power creep is just out of control, and the high-end benchmarks should only be about 30k. they also need to take a look at the downleveling system which no longer works correctly as it doesn't take all the skill creep into account, like how certain utility skills do ten times as much as before.

 

i also think the raptor should just be permanent for all players, or perhaps the warclaw instead.

 

unfortunately, while the simplest fix is to just buff all open-world enemies and events by a flat percentage, or reduce all outgoing damage by a flat percentage, its unlikely arenanet will do this as many players don't want to drop their 1k dps full tank bearbow builds and will complain alot.

 

this sounds harsh, but the only way we will ever see a reduction of power creep is if low-end players accept having to improve at the game.

Edited January 17 by SoftFootpaws.9134

[Phyb.6704]

8 hours ago, ZenonSeth.5739 said:

I feel like there's zero chance ANET does anything about this, but I did pay money for this game long ago, I get to complaint. If you have a problem with that, feel free to close the thread and don't read further.

I only have a raptor, and started a new character to get back into the game. But getting to events in time before they are wiped by a bunch of glow in the dark sparkly rainbow dragon high level players is pretty much impossible. And I'm talking regular event chains where one event leads to another - e.g. kill the 3 centaur vets in Kessex hills that leads to a champ spawning just a little further away. Even with a raptor, that champ gets wiped before I can reach it - let alone if i tried to get to one of the bloodstone crazed beasts that spawn halfway across the map. 

I get it, if you want to be competitive, buy all the expansions, grind for the flying mounts and stop complaining - I've heard that argument before. Nice one. Except all that makes me want to do is quit this game and never look back. And don't get me started on how the game looks like its full of glowing clowns with rainbow kitten everywhere. It's so immersion breaking, it's insane. But that's minor compared to the gameplay issues that come from the disadvantage of players even with just the basic mount.

My advice would be just to play through all the story and enjoy it. Its not a bad story. I enjoyed the story and got much of what I needed as I did the story. Drop into a few meta events that are so long you wont get screwed by the power creep and keep doing the story. Sadly even with skyscale you will still have problems since the power creep is really bad and anet just does not care to balance the game. kitten dies at the speed of light. Even with skyscale I can rarely make it to stuff before its dead.

If you follow through all the story from start to finish and just swap mastery tracks after raptor long jump to then train springer high jump.... you do NOT need the full mastery track to be unlocked..... You will get most of what you need. Jackel is pretty quick though its a side story to the main story so you can get that easily. Its actually quite fun if you like games like portal. 

The only mounts you wont get directly from playing through the games story is......

jackel - side story in pof. You will enjoy it if you like games like portal. You do not need it but its a fun teleporting thing.
Griff - You do not need this at all imo. You can get it after finishing pof but there is no req.
Turtle - Useful but not needed imo. Many have it so you dont really NEED it. You can get it in EoD but you wont be effected much by not having it.

Skyscale - half/half. You get full use in soto maps by doing the story. There is an acheivment for global use and the soto acheivment can be done in about 1-2hrs. It depends on how fast the stupid nests drop the egg. After that its very very quick. 

The problem is not so much the mounts but the power creep. Stuff dies WAY too fast. All the scaling for condi, expertise, power, prec, feroc are very very high. Then healing power is either super high or basically so small it has no effect. Even if you're slower you should get there by the time an event is at low hp but not dead. Sadly that is not the case. 

 

 

[Danikat.8537]

13 hours ago, Kiki.9450 said:

One thing that would be real nice to see is a tuning pass on old content to help address the concerns of the OP and also to help with power creep. Maybe something that only or primarily impacts level 80s in Core through HoT zones. (I don't feel like PoF is too bad yet but maybe others disagree?)

I agree with this. Downscaling has never really worked properly, a downscaled character is always more powerful than a genuinely low level one, but it wouldn't surprise me if it's gotten worse in recent years because there's more sources of stats (like the jade bot, a 6th rune bonus in addition to relics giving the old bonuses etc).

I think it would be useful for down-scalling to be looked at again and made more dramatic. I don't know what exactly would work - just increasing how much each thing is reduced, changing how it's calculated or what, but I'm sure Anet could work something out.

Having said that I also agree that the best thing to do now is not worry about it and don't try to rush and keep up. I recently had to restart my 'perma-death' challenge character so I've been going around Wayfarer Foothills on a low level character with no mounts, no gliding and only white equipment and while there have been time when players on mounts have rushed in and cleared events before I could reach them there's also been several times when they've rushed off again and missed a new event starting up (either following on from the one they completed or one that just happens to be in the same area) so I've been able to do that one instead. I haven't been counting of course but I feel like I haven't missed that many events overall.

I was playing my previous perma-death character exactly the same way, and it took about 55 hours to get to level 75, through a mix of story and map completion.

Events are a good source of XP, but they're not so important that you can't afford to miss one or need to rush all over the map chasing them if it's not fun to do that. You'll have a better experience if you just do the ones you can when you come across them and don't worry about trying to keep up with players racing across the map.

[Astralporing.1957]

14 hours ago, Linken.6345 said:

Btw OP it is even worse now then back in the day as they can just sit in the air shooting fireballs in low level maps making it hard for newer people to progress evens.

Raptors were more of an issue, but Skyscales actually do less damage than an average OW player.

[Kiki.9450]

9 hours ago, KindredPhoenyx.8976 said:

the issue here isn't the players, it's power creep.

A lot of the high end metas that used to take a decade are now getting absolutely steamrolled-- like end boss of Dragon's Stand. Numbers are overdue a tune down.

Yes please. Good luck asking a map full of people to slow DPS on Dragon's Stand because you and a couple other folks want to get achievements that at the current rate can't even happen due to the power creep. That boss is dead long before those adds spawn...

[Smurfiness.3714]

Once upon a time we run everywhere and even trash mobs in Silverwaste waste us good. 

[Phyb.6704]

Skycale lets you go over stuff. Other mounts require you to go through or around. Being able to barrel roll across a map above everything is very fast compared to a raptor either going around or having to go through and risk getting hit off the mount. 

[Cuks.8241]

Downscaling could be looked at. And mounts should do 0 dmg below lvl 80. Maybe even downscale mount stamina regeneration. 

I just did map completion after a long long time. Most champs are basically veteran mobs for a geared lvl 80. There are a few that take maybe a bit more time. There is really nothing in old world remotely threatening. Even legendary bandit is not scary, didn't solo it, there was another lvl 80 there but there was nothing threatening about him. 

People talked about one shoting, well on some power builds you literary do one shot stuff now. Even Orr mobs.  

[Teknomancer.4895]

Upon entering any of the starting areas:

• Queensdale
• Metrica Province
• Caledon Forest
• Plains of Ashford
• Wayfarer Foothills

You should get this:  "You are entering an area where mounts are not allowed. You have been dismounted."

It might not kill the event speedruns, but it would make them less attractive since the faster mount travel wouldn't exist.

People might then decide the reward wasn't worth the time and go elsewhere, leaving the starter zones to their intended purpose.

[ShadowKatt.6740]

5 hours ago, Teknomancer.4895 said:

Upon entering any of the starting areas:

• Queensdale
• Metrica Province
• Caledon Forest
• Plains of Ashford
• Wayfarer Foothills

You should get this:  "You are entering an area where mounts are not allowed. You have been dismounted."

It might not kill the event speedruns, but it would make them less attractive since the faster mount travel wouldn't exist.

People might then decide the reward wasn't worth the time and go elsewhere, leaving the starter zones to their intended purpose.

Here here, seconded.

[Mistwraithe.3106]

Raptors are actually pretty fast in a straight line, but agreed that obstacles can get in the way. As others have said a big part of the problem is that everything dies too fast due to DPS creep.

[kharmin.7683]

7 hours ago, Teknomancer.4895 said:

Upon entering any of the starting areas:

• Queensdale
• Metrica Province
• Caledon Forest
• Plains of Ashford
• Wayfarer Foothills

You should get this:  "You are entering an area where mounts are not allowed. You have been dismounted."

It might not kill the event speedruns, but it would make them less attractive since the faster mount travel wouldn't exist.

People might then decide the reward wasn't worth the time and go elsewhere, leaving the starter zones to their intended purpose.

Why should I be penalized for wanting to use a mount in these zones?  I'm not the type of player that is doing the things that are complained about in this thread.  I spend a good bit of time in these zones helping out new players.

[Randulf.7614]

7 hours ago, Teknomancer.4895 said:

Upon entering any of the starting areas:

• Queensdale
• Metrica Province
• Caledon Forest
• Plains of Ashford
• Wayfarer Foothills

You should get this:  "You are entering an area where mounts are not allowed. You have been dismounted."

It might not kill the event speedruns, but it would make them less attractive since the faster mount travel wouldn't exist.

People might then decide the reward wasn't worth the time and go elsewhere, leaving the starter zones to their intended purpose.

There are mount related achievements in those maps. For example, the Skyscale rifts. Whole achievements would need to be re-written and backdated etc etc

[kharmin.7683]

7 hours ago, Teknomancer.4895 said:

Upon entering any of the starting areas:

• Queensdale
• Metrica Province
• Caledon Forest
• Plains of Ashford
• Wayfarer Foothills

You should get this:  "You are entering an area where mounts are not allowed. You have been dismounted."

It might not kill the event speedruns, but it would make them less attractive since the faster mount travel wouldn't exist.

People might then decide the reward wasn't worth the time and go elsewhere, leaving the starter zones to their intended purpose.

This also defeats the purpose of giving out the 'loaner' raptor.