My Beautiful Infrastructure

[Rasimir.6239]

@FrizzFreston.5290 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@FrizzFreston.5290 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:It's funny to see these 'issues'. I'm not going to tell anyone how to play but if you are camping an area to get an event, I seems to me you really aren't in the mode of 'playing' the game as it's intended.

So, what I mean is ... if you just play around the map, you get these events without going out of your way to do them. I only wish more achievements were like this one

because it really enforces the idea you play that game, not just go through the motions of completing checklists.

Really? It seems to me people are much more goal oriented than you and I.

And while you're right that you can get them quite easily if you ignore the achievement and play through the map and only just minorly pay attention to it, it sadly doesnt really enforce the idea to play the game by putting such a focal point on these specific events. Instead it obviously distracts, seeing how some people do these.

Well, that's the thing ... there ISN'T a focal point on these specific events if you don't camp them like a checklist. You do eventually encounter them as you naturally play the map.

Sadly, that's how it works for many players though. The achievement is part of the overarching meta achievement after all, and you get the last missing armor piece of the map from it (Gloves or boots was it I believe). And since the general mentality is to I need to finish this map!", it is a hurdle that's in the way.You will always have a subset of players that is more interested in gaming the system than playing the game. No matter how much you try to counteract this with game design, they will find a way that seems more "efficient", even if it is totally counter intuitive to those who want to immerse themselves in the game world around them and play events organically.

Personally I accept the trade-off that the open design of this game allows this kind of gaming the system like it allows RIBA farms in the Silverwastes or squads promoting to zerg down all post meta champs in Dragonfall in one group (rather than the three chains that seem to be set up for parallel play) or whatever else people come up with that prefer "efficient" over "immersive" play. Designing content to ultimately prohibit this kind of gameplay will be to the detriment of all players, as it will force us to play one way and one way alone as any deviation needs to be prohibited to avoid gaming the system.

@runeblade.7514 said:I dislike this achievement not because I want it to be easier but because what it causes the people to do.

When the map reaches T4, everyone just leaves and the map becomes a dead map. It becomes a dead map because bridge events don't spawn when all camps reaches t4. When it becomes a dead map, squadmates can't join and help with the meta at my map.As was said above, the achievement doesn't take long. 25 bridge events will be done quickly by those that focus on checking off achievements. Give it a week or two, and those players will have moved off to different objectives, and the way the Dragonfall meta and reward system is set up, there's a good chance that a sizeable number of those will instead turn to regularly playing the Dragonfall meta and post-meta champs, significantly increasing the number of successful maps.

Opening up the map lock during meta on the other hand has a very real chance (as seen on other, similar maps) of people map-hopping from one promising meta event to another, only reaping the benefits while leaving others to do the heavy lifting (as in: bring the map to the profitable meta phase). That certainly isn't the solution to the temporary problem of bridge-squads.

[FrizzFreston.5290]

@Rasimir.6239 said:

@FrizzFreston.5290 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@FrizzFreston.5290 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:It's funny to see these 'issues'. I'm not going to tell anyone how to play but if you are camping an area to get an event, I seems to me you really aren't in the mode of 'playing' the game as it's intended.

So, what I mean is ... if you just play around the map, you get these events without going out of your way to do them. I only wish more achievements were like this one

because it really enforces the idea you play that game, not just go through the motions of completing checklists.

Really? It seems to me people are much more goal oriented than you and I.

And while you're right that you can get them quite easily if you ignore the achievement and play through the map and only just minorly pay attention to it, it sadly doesnt really enforce the idea to play the game by putting such a focal point on these specific events. Instead it obviously distracts, seeing how some people do these.

Well, that's the thing ... there ISN'T a focal point on these specific events if you don't camp them like a checklist. You do eventually encounter them as you naturally play the map.

Sadly, that's how it works for many players though. The achievement is part of the overarching meta achievement after all, and you get the last missing armor piece of the map from it (Gloves or boots was it I believe). And since the general mentality is to I need to finish this map!", it is a hurdle that's in the way.You will always have a subset of players that is more interested in gaming the system than playing the game. No matter how much you try to counteract this with game design, they will find a way that seems more "efficient", even if it is totally counter intuitive to those who want to immerse themselves in the game world around them and play events organically.

Personally I accept the trade-off that the open design of this game allows this kind of gaming the system like it allows RIBA farms in the Silverwastes or squads promoting to zerg down all post meta champs in Dragonfall in one group (rather than the three chains that seem to be set up for parallel play) or whatever else people come up with that prefer "efficient" over "immersive" play. Designing content to ultimately prohibit this kind of gameplay will be to the detriment of all players, as it will force us to play one way and one way alone as any deviation needs to be prohibited to avoid gaming the system.

Gamedesign ultimately is about guiding the player through the content. Its not about prohibiting anything, rather than providing an entertaining piece of content. If the bridge achievement was designed to be part of the meta, none of us would even feel as being prohibitive or limiting, as it would be part of the design, that its just designed like that, players none the wiser.

Ofcourse you cannot account for every player, and personally, I don't have any problem with this achievement.

But, this "open end" designing (mostly just slapping an achievement on a subset of events) does naturally cause some friction between these playstyles.

I just wanted to point out, imo, its just cause and effect, and less "you cannot account for every player" which here hasnt been thought about, or even actively ignored, as it gives players the feeling they can do it, whichever way they want to, within its own limits ofcourse.

[Rasimir.6239]

@FrizzFreston.5290 said:

@Rasimir.6239 said:

@FrizzFreston.5290 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@FrizzFreston.5290 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:It's funny to see these 'issues'. I'm not going to tell anyone how to play but if you are camping an area to get an event, I seems to me you really aren't in the mode of 'playing' the game as it's intended.

So, what I mean is ... if you just play around the map, you get these events without going out of your way to do them. I only wish more achievements were like this one

because it really enforces the idea you play that game, not just go through the motions of completing checklists.

Really? It seems to me people are much more goal oriented than you and I.

And while you're right that you can get them quite easily if you ignore the achievement and play through the map and only just minorly pay attention to it, it sadly doesnt really enforce the idea to play the game by putting such a focal point on these specific events. Instead it obviously distracts, seeing how some people do these.

Well, that's the thing ... there ISN'T a focal point on these specific events if you don't camp them like a checklist. You do eventually encounter them as you naturally play the map.

Sadly, that's how it works for many players though. The achievement is part of the overarching meta achievement after all, and you get the last missing armor piece of the map from it (Gloves or boots was it I believe). And since the general mentality is to I need to finish this map!", it is a hurdle that's in the way.You will always have a subset of players that is more interested in gaming the system than playing the game. No matter how much you try to counteract this with game design, they will find a way that seems more "efficient", even if it is totally counter intuitive to those who want to immerse themselves in the game world around them and play events organically.

Personally I accept the trade-off that the open design of this game allows this kind of gaming the system like it allows RIBA farms in the Silverwastes or squads promoting to zerg down all post meta champs in Dragonfall in one group (rather than the three chains that seem to be set up for parallel play) or whatever else people come up with that prefer "efficient" over "immersive" play. Designing content to ultimately prohibit this kind of gameplay will be to the detriment of all players, as it will force us to play one way and one way alone as any deviation needs to be prohibited to avoid gaming the system.

Gamedesign ultimately is about guiding the player through the content. Its not about prohibiting anything, rather than providing an entertaining piece of content. If the bridge achievement was designed to be part of the meta, none of us would even feel as being prohibitive or limiting, as it would be part of the design, that its just designed like that, players none the wiser.But it is. If on the start of the map people spread out to join the three escort events, two out of three naturally come upon a broken bridge that needs repairing. In fact even the npc chatter when the escorts reach the bridges it tailored to the escort coming upon a broken bridge. It was only when people started rushing ahead to specifically target the bridge event that the "natural" flow of events broke (and those rushing ahead at the same time messed it up for those playing more organically).

Same goes for the other two bridges by the way. If people just play along with the way the events flow (and I've encountered a few maps where that worked beautifully), you'll eventually have caravans from the outer camps going to the central camp, crossing the south and west bridges in the process. Again if people don't camp bridges but just play along, there's a big chance that the caravan will come upon either a bridge defense event or a bridge rebuild event in the natural course of its path.

There's not a lot ANet can do to keep people from camping those events and messing it up for others. Stalling the initial bridge event until the corresponding escort is at the bridge (e.g. by having the bridge npc start out at the starting point and walk to the bridge with the escort instead of spawning as soon as the map resets) would be a possibility to tie the intitial building of the bridge more closely into the escort. Triggering a build/defense event at the outer bridges once the caravan arrives could be another tweak to more closely link the events.

Ultimately there will still be people refusing to participate in the escort events on the premise that they are "no efficient use of their time", and probably more whining on the forums from the very vocal part of the community that needs to have every reward and achievement done 5 minutes after release that these events are time-gating their progress. Right now, seeing how easy it is to get those 25 bridge events done, I fully expect the hype to die down within a week or two and bridge events and map meta being done as a natural part of playing the map on most maps again ... until somebody comes up with a new way to game the map's event structure for "optimized loot", breaking gameplay for the less optimization interested player in different ways.

[Samuel.4812]

The gloves should have been rewarded via another achievement. Problem solved.

As everyone gets it though this will be less of a problem.

[Astralporing.1957]

@LucianDK.8615 said:Its quite doable in a multimap group, which makes it a lot faster.You get a large group with multiple subgroups that spreads out among the bridge zones on different maps. So if the event spawns for south bridge on map 3. Then people at south position on like map 1-2-4-5 warps to 3 and knocks it off, before going back to their previous maps and calling out if they get it there.

took me about 2 hours to get x25

If a relatively minor achievement for something that's practically a solo activity creates this level of organization, it suggests that there's something weird with that achievement.

[MetalGirl.2370]

You need 25 bridges and 25 metas, so you can easily get 1 per map that you do from lvl 1 to 4. Even more if you keep checking as they come back up roughly every 15 mins.You're 95% of the time going to come across bridge event if you:

1- Right after that event is done, WP back to Pact camp, there will be another escort event (DERV [bottom lane], Awakened Abomination [top lane] , Effigy [middle lane])2- While escorting said events, you will 95% of the time, come across bridge event, as it is on the way and it should be around the time when it spawns up

Those escort events come right after the very first escort event (the one where you take NPCs to form the camp at the start)So far I have 17 meta and 17 bridges just by doing that.

[Jora.5471]

@Rasimir.6239 said:Opening up the map lock during meta on the other hand has a very real chance (as seen on other, similar maps) of people map-hopping from one promising meta event to another, only reaping the benefits while leaving others to do the heavy lifting (as in: bring the map to the profitable meta phase). That certainly isn't the solution to the temporary problem of bridge-squads.

I don't see whats wrong with people wanting to only do the Kralk meta event.

• I want more people to help with the meta at my map anyways. I don't want the meta to fail and make my heavy lifting go to waste.
• Also, the people that do not help with upgrading camps do not get Keys which means they can't open the chests after Kralk is defeated. If they already have keys, then they worked for it and deserve the chests reward.

[Boogiepop Void.6473]

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@"Boogiepop Void.6473" said:People are leaving maps when the meta phase pops and bridges stop, causing maps to close down."Meta Pops" means when meta STARTS, ie when the jammer events begin and bridges stop happening. Not at the end of the meta.

[Stalkingwolf.6035]

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:Personally I just camp by a bridge and watch youtube.

yeah what a great gamedesign.Best part is when they do not count. you get the chest from the event, but counter stucks. so much fun.

[Jokel.5164]

I was looking for a good way of doing it but I guess I‘ll continue the way I did it so far. Camping and reading a book :DIt’s kinda stupid though. This is one of the things that made me wonder how the game supposedly is not grindy...

[Blocki.4931]

@"Jokel.5164" said:I was looking for a good way of doing it but I guess I‘ll continue the way I did it so far. Camping and reading a book :DIt’s kinda stupid though. This is one of the things that made me wonder how the game supposedly is not grindy...

After the map resets you can go north to south and do all bridge events in a row. It's this way because you're supposed to be farming this map as it came out, doing the several events and achievements multiple times over the natural course of things, kind of like the "kill 1k enemies" ones. I still haven't done those lol

[Dark.1605]

mostly now its only one map after these years and they are key farming 24/7 so basically no bridge event the whole day

it took me entire day to do 4 events only !
can you guys make it a bit more consistent somehow !?

[god fragment.5716]

They do realize that the bridge events don't happen during the main meta event right and that they are on a 15min timer.

 

Quoted from wiki:

Each bridge event restarts approximately 15 minutes after the last success.

 

Once the Break the Crystal Dragon meta event has started, the bridge events will cease to appear.