Why is the Maw of Torment Meta Event Not on a Global Timer?

[Gilburt.9146]

I would like to be able to do the Maw of Torment Meta Event in the Desolation more often. It's quick and easy Elegy Mosiacs and one of the better Meta Events if PoF (plus I'd like to get the Realm-Portal Spiker achievement someday...); however, I almost never see this event on LFG (even around reset time). It's easy to coordinate other meta events because their start time is predictable, so people will reliably show up in advance, but the start time for Maw is random and unique to each map IP. This means that most of the time this event is completely ignored. Can this meta event (and perhaps others in PoF as well) be given a global timer shared across all map IPs so people can complete it more consistently?

[Mewcifer.5198]

Yeah, I think the Augury Rock meta is also off-timer. I don't like that they made events that require a good amount of people like these without a set timer. It just makes them even harder to get done.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

I think this was done in response to complaints that the HoT metas were all on a timer.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

I dislike events being on a timer. It makes the game feel like a job ("at 3:50 pm, you'll meet your team at the objective and if you finish on time, meet your next group at 4:15 pm at ..."). I prefer the Silverwastes system, where you can show up any time and get in the meta.

It's good to have a mix of maps without metas, maps with scheduled metas, and maps with unscheduled ones.

[Greener.6204]

Anet took pity on Alex when it came to expanding the wiki's event timer. He's running out of colours.

[Gilburt.9146]

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:I dislike events being on a timer. It makes the game feel like a job ("at 3:50 pm, you'll meet your team at the objective and if you finish on time, meet your next group at 4:15 pm at ..."). I prefer the Silverwastes system, where you can show up any time and get in the meta.

It's good to have a mix of maps without metas, maps with scheduled metas, and maps with unscheduled ones.

Eh, constantly having to check LFG for a squad doing Maw (with no success 99% of the time) feels more like a chore to me. Having events off timer only really works in maps with particularly rewarding metas that can be farmed constantly by a large group of players, which is not the case with any PoF map. You can't exactly show up anytime for Maw meta as you never know when people will be organizing it (and they usually aren't).

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@Gilburt.9146 said:

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:I dislike events being on a timer. It makes the game feel like a job ("at 3:50 pm, you'll meet your team at the objective and if you finish on time, meet your next group at 4:15 pm at ..."). I prefer the Silverwastes system, where you can show up any time and get in the meta.

It's good to have a mix of maps without metas, maps with scheduled metas, and maps with unscheduled ones.

Eh, constantly having to check LFG for a squad doing Maw (with no success 99% of the time) feels more like a chore to me. Having events off timer only really works in maps with particularly rewarding metas that can be farmed constantly by a large group of players, which is not the case with any PoF map. You can't exactly show up anytime for Maw meta as you never know when people will be organizing it (and they usually aren't).

Putting it on a timer makes it, in my opinion, the very definition of a chore: something you are tasked with doing and you don't even get to choose when.

There are several reasons why the Maw chain doesn't work as well as Silverwastes. I wouldn't do it more often if it was on a timer, because it's a long event that requires some squad-wide coordination, without short-term & consolation rewards or sufficiently substantive rewards at the end. It was fun to do once or twice, but I'd rather do mindless bounties and get nearly similar rewards for less effort.

My point is that the principle of mixing up how the maps work is good, not about whether Maw itself is as well-designed as other chained events.

[Gilburt.9146]

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:Putting it on a timer makes it, in my opinion, the very definition of a chore: something you are tasked with doing and you don't even get to choose when.

There are several reasons why the Maw chain doesn't work as well as Silverwastes. I wouldn't do it more often if it was on a timer, because it's a long event that requires some squad-wide coordination, without short-term & consolation rewards or sufficiently substantive rewards at the end. It was fun to do once or twice, but I'd rather do mindless bounties and get nearly similar rewards for less effort.

My point is that the principle of mixing up how the maps work is good, not about whether Maw itself is as well-designed as other chained events.

Players have no control when the Maw meta starts, so it doesn't make sense to say player choice is a factor. Silverwastes is great because when that map is farmed properly, there is always something profitable to do, so a player truly can jump in whenever they want (which I agree is a good thing). That is not the case with Maw, being that it is unpredictable and down the majority of the time, and there aren't enough other rewarding events on the map to keep a coordinated group of players busy.

I agree Maw meta rewards could be better, but the event only takes about 15 minutes in my experience (longer if you do the optional pre-event), so the rewards aren't bad for the amount of time it takes.

Don't get me wrong, I would welcome more metas like Silverwastes, but the Maw meta doesn't work in that role. Also, if you don't like the Maw meta in it's current state, why do you care if it's on a timer? :p

[Urud.4925]

Using the LFG for this meta is not that useful, unfortunately. The event lasts few minutes and most of the times that I join a "maw pre" or "maw" in LFG, it's already over and the group is disbanding. I'm trying to complete this achiev in the last 2 weeks, so I keep an alt there and when I see the event starting, I write "maw pre" in map chat. If I'm lucky, usually someone joins. For the moment, this seems the best option to get a decent group for it. But if the map is dead/busy with some other event, there's nothing to do :/