Festival of the Four Winds feedback

[Ashen.2907]

> @"Jimbru.6014" said:

> > @"Raizel.8175" said:

> > > @"Heibi.4251" said:

> > > Crown Pavilion meta creates lots of "salt" due to the timer and the scaling. Mostly the way it scales.

> >

> > That's not the problem. The problem is the auto-attack mentality of the majority of the people. Most people barely do any damage nor know how to properly use cc-skills.

>

> I am firmly convinced that my pet does more DPS than a lot of players I've seen in group events.

 

Those Brown Bears hit hard!

[Batel.9206]

I wasn't around for the original Festival, so I'm just doing it now...and I have to say, it's *beautiful*. I cannot stop smiling when riding around on a borrowed skimmer, twirling around in the water just for the fun of it. And the griffon... Oh my gosh, the griffon. I don't have mounts yet, so to be able to get a little preview of what they'll be like when I get there is fantastic. I adore the griffon so much. Flying is *so much fun*!

 

I love the atmosphere of the Labyrinthine Cliffs - so bright and sunny and happy. While my computer slows to the speed of a snail glued to a glacier due to the sheer mass of people, it's still lovely. I like the events, even though I'm absolutely *terrible* at the races. In the Boss Blitz event, it's difficult to tell what's even happening, where the boss is, or what they look like because of the flood of people (even on lowest possible settings) crowding about. Personally, I still find it fun, if a little frustrating. I do have to question the boss scaling, though. It takes an insane amount of time to kill one boss - upwards of ten minutes. Is that supposed to happen?

 

In any case, thank you for this festival, ArenaNet!! :)

[Ashantara.8731]

Also, the Sanctum Sprint and Aspects Arena NPCs need to be re-located to become better visible to players (you only properly spot them on the mini map).

[Kelly.7019]

> @"Briars.1425" said:

> First thing's first, I have missed this festival so much. the updates to it have also made it so much more fun, and the mastery system has helped with traveling around the Cliffs themselves.

>

> though i have 2 points that I am not really happy with.

> 1. the downtime between the Treasure Hunt meta in the Cliffs. given that its a possible daily, it being 2 hours between them feels really bad for people with limited time.

> 2. The Pavilion race. specifically the pirate portion. having to go up the very thin ramps with the less accuracy of mount turns (yes some are better than others for different things) feels pretty bad to me (and a few friends ive talked to about it)

 

the pirate portion is what seperates the pack! and skill to get it the first time. good job imo.

[Kelly.7019]

i miss the original content. i thought there was some fighting event up by the upper wp to the ship the last time. or maybe there was a jp? Content in labby as far as activities seems lacking once you finished the achieves the first day. Also why is there no Underwater content? other then swimming around abit for the hunt event or cruising around the bay on the party boat, seems like this would have been a good opportunity to add more underwater metas/ events/ achieves.

 

*I heard there was some sort of quaggon thing lighing orbs, but i can't seem to start it at the dead quaggon in the ship? More things like this and if they were hidden would be great to add to the game.

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

Was going to make a thread for this but I see I got beaten. :)

 

Anyways, I'll type up my full feedback.

 

#Traders#

Going to start with our favorite material sink traders. The fact they got minimal changes since Festival of the Four Winds is a bit disappointing. Apparently all they really got was an increased price, and ecto got added (replacing candy corn). I would add the following things to the trader's list of taken materials:

 

* Refined versions of the materials. A lot of people who horde will horde not the unrefined stuff, but the refined, since they take up half or 1/3rd as much space. So while the unrefined versions' prices increased due to this update, the refined versions are still kept in horded numbers on accounts. I would add a second tab to each material trader for refined versions.

* Newer way-too-common materials, such as Pieces of Ambrite, Foxfire Clusters, and Piles of Coarse Sand from Season 2, Flax Fibers, Leaf Fossils, Resonating Slivers, and Barbed Thorns from Heart of Thorns, and Slivers of Twitching Forgemetal, Congealed Putrescences, and Eyes of Kormir from Path of Fire (while Eyes of Kormir do have their own sink, this is insufficient so a temporary one from Festival would work).

 

**TL;DR** Some upgrades to the traders to account for newer materials that desperately need sinks would be wonderful.

 

**Festival Traders**

Now this is more just a pet peeve for me, but let's talk about that Festival Token trader that gives Season 1 stuff - and while we're at it, Laurel merchants and Sonder the Seller too. I think that Fortune Scraps (and Golden Fortune Scraps) have been on Sonder's list for far too long. I think it's time to clean up these three merchants' lists now that we have [a constant means of getting Season 1 rewards](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Black_Lion_Commemorative_Sprocket). Change the Fortune Scraps and Golden Fortune Scraps to be a "double click to gain Festival Tokens", so that we can safely be rid of them forevermore. On top of that, remove non-Bazaar/Jubilee items from S1 from the Festival Token S1 item merchants, and remove the Bazaar/Jubilee S1 items from Laurel and Commemorative vendors.

 

Just a bit of clean up, to make the festival more about itself, and not a "hey S1 is gone forever here's the stuff" BS.

 

#Labyrinthine Cliffs#

I love this zone, and can just run around it without doing anything. But the problem is, once you complete the three scavenger hunts, there's _**nothing to do**_ besides three infrequent events. I would honestly make those events happen every 15 minutes rather than every 30 (e.g., Skimmer at :00, Dolyak at :15, Treasure Hunt at :30). This would help keep people occupied once they've completed the three scavenger hunt achievements.

 

Both in addition or alternatively, I feel there can be more events to help occupy time. For example, during Bazaar and Festival last time, we had a series of veterans-that-upscale-to-champ events throughout the route up along the Bazaar. Why did those get removed? They're a good time killer inbetween races. There was also the crystal collection event that was where the adventure is now; why remove one in favor of the other, instead of having both?

 

I wouldn't mind the addition of more Zephyrite airships, ones that are larger than a one-asura-room ship, to give a sense of where the Zephyrites live now, as well as just some high up stuff to do in our favored sky people lands.

 

**TL;DR** I _**love**_ its return, but would like more things to do besides one-time achievements and long waiting for races.

 

#Crown Pavilion#

I just have two things to say here...

 

1) Why remove the "Bonus Event: Cull the " events? I think they were removed in Festival 2014, but they'd be a nice intermittent/during Boss Blitz event for farming.

2) While loot got brought back (I remember Crown Pavilion foes gave no loot in Festival '14), the lack of Watchwork Sprockets makes the Trader in Lab Cliffs taking 15 of them seem silly. There's only one reliable source of Watchwork Sprockets now that Season 1 is ended, so that trader taking them (and at an increased rate than in Festival '14) seems silly. Would like them to drop those again.

 

Though I will agree with others about the scaling being a bit too much. I get the intention to divide, but it feels a bit too much. You just need enough to prevent getting gold by rotation TBH (which in of itself shouldn't be possible even if it were minimal people).

 

#Queen's Gauntlet#

To be honest, this was what I was looking forward to the most, dreading the most, and was disappointed with the most. It is unfortunately very clear that the Gauntlet didn't get any rebalancing to accommodate for power creep (even non-expansion got a power creep when the trait system revamped, as everyone got two additional traits). I ended up beating Liadri **on accident** using a self-nerfing build I was setting up on Subject 7 because it is apparently too dang easy to kill those extra oozes (adds a nice challenge to that one achievement though).

 

Worse for me was this "new special tier" which was meant to be super challenging. Yet only Turai Ossa is at all challenging, the other four are yawns worth, not even on par to tier 3 foes besides Liadri. And the fact none of them but Turai got an achievement was rather sad.

 

Add in the fact that [the only real extrinsic reward for gauntlet](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gauntlet_Chance) was removed, and it just feels like once you get the achievements done there's no need to do gauntlet. And that takes about 30 minutes tops outside of Liadri's 8 orbs and Turai Ossa.

 

**TL;DR** Please rebalance the foes for sake of power creep, and bring back those Gauntlet Chance rewards in _some_ form.

 

#Other things#

* Why no achievements marked (Annual) like Halloween, Wintersday, and Lunar New Year? I'm not sure which, if any, will reset next year or if all current achievements will just get archived like festivals of old that is apparently a system you (Anet) want to get away from?

* Why no Aspect Arena/Sanctum Sprint achievements for Festival?

* Favors of the Festival - intentionally restricted to dailies or is there actually another means to get them that doesn't seem widely known?

 

Lastly, [why is a dead person alive?](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Morning) ;)

[Tails.9372]

Overall I have to say that I like the event. I wish that some of the rewards were obtainable through spending a s**t ton of festival tokens (10k or above) instead of random chance. The fact that you have a better chance of getting stuff like the chak infusion by opening the Curio Box then by farming the appropriate event for years is kinda saddening.

[Heibi.4251]

I'll never be able to get 25/25 on the Festival. I can't get the Griffon race achieve because I've never been able to successfully do any griffon race. Achieves should be achievable by all for a festival. Stuck at 24/25 even though all the achievements are check marked.

 

Note: This was a glitch. As soon as I left the Crown Pavilion the achievement counted and I'm at 25/25.

[Tails.9372]

> @"Heibi.4251" said:

> I'll never be able to get 25/25 on the Festival. I can't get the Griffon race achieve because I've never been able to successfully do any griffon race. Achieves should be achievable by all for a festival. Stuck at 24/25 even though all the achievements are check marked.

The griffon race is not part of the master achievement.

[Briars.1425]

@Ashantara.8731 gaile actually recommended i make the thread when i saw her in game and mentioned my concerns (so devs can see it easier)

 

ive enjoyed reading through other people's critisms and suggestions!

[Dhemize.8649]

Four Winds Gale can only be achieved 4 times within the span of the event despite it being repeatable up to 10 times with achievement points. This bothers me.

[Randulf.7614]

> @"Dhemize.8649" said:

> Four Winds Gale can only be achieved 4 times within the span of the event despite it being repeatable up to 10 times with achievement points. This bothers me.

 

I assume like the other festivals, it saves progress and carries over to the next year

[Hevoskuuri.3891]

Overall I've had lots of fun with the festival, but there are some things I'd like to see improved/changed.

 

First off there's the waiting, especially in Labyrinthine Cliffs. The events have pretty hefty waiting times between them, and like someone already mentioned, some of the dailies can be a pain for time-limited players who get unlucky and log in just after the previous event. Sure, there are crystals and pages and griffon master and such to collect in the meantime, but after that's done you don't really have any incentive to go to the map without an event timer on.

 

Another thing, already mentioned as well, are the Blitz boss scalings. On the other hand, I think it's wonderful we get an event where we have to actually co-operate, but given the nature of GW2 open world PuGs, these 'gold runs' get ruined very often by ignorant players who just want to 1111 the bosses to get participation.

 

Third; why doesn't Crown Pavilion have a bank and TP? Why does Labyrinthine Cliffs have them? They are needed in the CP WAY more.

 

And finally there's the Queen's Gauntlet.

1. It's cool to be able to watch other players challenging bosses and all, but all the waiting gets really frustrating especially when you're trying to complete a hard achievement. It's also very unnerving knowing that other players are impatiently waiting for you to get it over with so that they get their turn. I honestly down't know what the perfect solution could be, but an instance would probably be the best approach. No lag from the 60-man squad killing bosses below, no waiting times, no pressure from other players, etc.

2. I also have a small issue with the gauntlet tickets; I've been farming the Gauntlet achievements nonstop, and those harder achievements really eat up your tickets. I know it's relatively easy to gain them, but at this point I just want to grind the achievements instead of killing a bunch of watchknights for a few more tickets. I'd gladly buy them with my festival tokens, but the 20-silver fee is INSANE considering the almost nonexistent value of 5 tickets. Just get rid of the ticket system entirely or let us buy them with festival tokens only. Also, they don't work from the bank, so unless you have a shared slot for them it's going to be a pain switching characters (especially without a bank in the pavilion).

3. And finally; when the gauntlet timer runs out, you fall to your death, have to waypoint, repair, run back, and get back in the queue. Why doesn't it just port you back like normally when you die? This doesn't happen often, but when it happens after I have Turai Ossa at 1% HP, it feels like an additional massive middle finger and makes me wanna puch my fist through a monitor.

 

All these are rather small issues though, overall it's been a great festival. Keep it up!

 

> @"Tails.9372" said:

> > @"Heibi.4251" said:

> > I'll never be able to get 25/25 on the Festival. I can't get the Griffon race achieve because I've never been able to successfully do any griffon race. Achieves should be achievable by all for a festival. Stuck at 24/25 even though all the achievements are check marked.

> The griffon race is not part of the master achievement.

 

Yeah it is. The only achievement in the list that is NOT part of the master achievement is the kookoochoo page collection thingy.

 

Took me 30 tries or so, but I finally got it. The hardest part was the second-last hoop in the narrow alleyway, but there's a trick to it; after speeding through the first 5 hoops, you can slow down and casually flap through the narrow alley part. You'll still get gold easily without fear of hitting the walls or missing the alley. Hope this helps.

[Biff.5312]

I like it just fine. Some fun events. Some nice rewards. But not unattainable stuff that requires you to play for hours and hours, so even a casual player can get some skins, maybe a node for home instance, etc. It's been a nice distraction and source for crystals. I'm good.

[Zushada.6108]

> @"Ashantara.8731" said:

> P.S. The automatic removal of gambits after each (failed) round is majorly annoying. Reapplying them costs time and you your position in the queue. :angry: (We can remove them at our own will, so why removing them by default?)

 

I really agree with this. It is very frustrating to have to keep using the tickets every time you fail to beat a boss. I went through 5 the other day, one one boss because I was walking my friend through the fight and trying to show her the gambit effect and the adjustments I made to my combat. It was a bit much to go from 160+ tickets to 60 tickets in a couple of hours of teaching and attempting Liadri (she hates me).

 

I can see it costing when you change or add a gambit, or if we use the "remove active gambits" feature but having them stripped after each round is a bit cheap especially when it can take multiple rounds just to learn a fight mechanic (some of us missed the first year of the event).

[Dami.5046]

only real thing is a re-vamp of the rewards maybe?

[Martnor.1746]

I really wish the tokens would just go into the wallet. They take a lot of space

[TheQuickFox.3826]

I think the devs really did a great job with this festival. I never was at previous instances of it so everything is new to me.

I love the design of the Labyrinthine Cliffs area. Such a beautiful and happy place to hang and fly around in with my Griffon. I like the diverse non-combat activities here. Everything just feels very laid back and relaxed. Excellent for a summer festival.

 

The Queens Gantlet was quite challenging, with Liadri the Concealing Dark and Turai Ossa being beyond my skill level. But with some trial and error I was able to beat the other bosses, with and without gambits on.

 

The crown pavilion I found quite nice as well, with the only criticism that the bosses have way too much HP for my taste, resulting in very time consuming battles. I would reduce them to around one third of the HP they have now.

 

Altogether a great festival, and I was able to gain a lot of achievement points along the way, making it very rewarding to play to me as achievement hunter. Best festival in game altogether!

[Ashantara.8731]

> @"Shayne Hawke.9160" said:

> * No repeatable achievement tracks for Aspect Arena or Sanctum Sprint - no way to easily track how many matches you've played or won.

 

By the way, **the Aspect Arena should be in the pool of dailies for the festival**. Why isn't it? It's _a lot more fun_ than the repetative Boss Blitz.

[TheQuickFox.3826]

It's over now. Thanks for the wonderful festival and the laid-back activities in Labyrinthine Cliffs. Aranimda was happy to see the Zephyrites again, glide around on his griffon finding the hidden crystals and of course, enjoy the beach. Best festival in game imho.

[Dante.1763]

Since the event is over some feedback i feel would make the event better next year:

1.) Re introduce the rewards from doing the arena fights, even a "nerfed" version would be better than nothing.

2.) the scaling on the bosses for the boss blitz needs to be redone, at the very least it needs to be changed to an absolute minimum of 10 people before it upscales.

3.) the sky crystals and master sky crystals need to have some kind of tracking system.

4.) tokens need to go inside the wallet.

 

I did enjoy the event as it was, but without anything to earn in game now that ive done all the achievements, and gotten most of the items i need something to bring me back and the ability to earn rewards from the arena fights would do that.

[Boogiepop Void.6473]

Pavilion:

* Boss Blitz needs to have it's scaling rebalanced so it doesn't turn into such a mess and stretch out to 3-5 times as long if things get dicey. This isn't saying turn it into a zerg fest, but the scaling is far too steep.

* The Blitz Bosses need to be balanced against each other. Hab, Sparc, and Kurai are far harder than Boom who is harder than Wiggins or Pyro. This creates a common tendency to lock up and have to hold for extended periods. It also makes it hard to get people to go to certain bosses.

* Sparc in particular has a design that shuts down both ranged AND melee attacks on him. Needs a redo.

* Hablion punishes people without HoT, because they can't glide and mounts can't be deployed in combat, so they take tons of falling damage and can't get back to him as fast. We tested this and if your group is all no-HoT your DPS drops by nearly a third due to time running back and extra time down/rezzing.

* Mob density/spawnrate/difficulty need to be looked into. Some bosses are made much harder because they have very hard mobs with high spawnrate that keep coming in on top of them. The white mantle, destroyers, and Flame legion seem to be much stronger than the bandits or pirates. The invulnerable insta-knockdown centaurs are just unfun.

* Geometry on the race track needs to be cleaned up. There are many spots where you get stuck on things you are visibly missing or just stuck on things it's shouldn't be possible to stick on (like ramp lips, joints). The pirate area in particular has this.

* Please isolate the audio and alerts for boss blitz and the Gauntlet. People in boss don't need to hear all the sounds and announcements from Gauntlet and vice-versa.

* Please award fully for the race when you finish. Waiting around for the timer to count down with nothing going on is no fun (note: general comment on races).

* Please adjust rewards. Even for gold, the time invested is not worth the rewards given, aside from once for your Favor of the Pavilion daily.

* Gauntlet tickets drop in ludicrously high numbers, to the point where you can't possibly use them all even if you ran gauntlet all day every day outside of a single blitz run.

* There is no need for so many NPCs in the gauntlet. All of this could be condensed into a single NPC and would make it much easier to get to the fight instead of futzing in menus.

 

Labyrinthine Cliffs:

* Not much to do between the events. The collections and achievements are fun but are one time; once they are done there is literally nothing going on on the map between events.

* Treasure hunt needs more things you can get for booty.

* Aside from the treasure hunt daily, there is nothing that can only be done on this map in terms of dailies or repeatable achievements. And the race daily is easier to do in the pavilion.

 

General:

* Kite baskets need better contents. Outside of dailies they are pointless.

* Favors, Tokens, and Gauntlet tickets need to go in the wallet. Tokens in particular take huge numbers of bank slots, while tickets being on a character is very alt-unfriendly.

* Please give waypoint access to the Pavilion and the Cliffs. Fewer loading screens are better.

* Need a wardrobe for tonics and kites.

[Cragga the Eighty Third.60]

I had a wonderful time. The last thing I did was another boat ride, and we had a musician aboard who played the entire time, a great way to end the festival. ^^

 

A couple of small suggestions.

1. When in the Pavilion, it was a little hard to find the travel agent. The icon was on the map, but there was no visual indicator when looking around. The NPC often was invisible either because he was surrounded by players or just did not render due to crowds. It was less of a problem on the cliffs or in the cities, because those guys were standing in front of a big honking red hot air balloon. I think having a floating icon over the travel NPC's head, like a vendor, would make it much easier to locate.

 

2. It would be nice, if possible, if some sort of map icon could show where the boat was, to make it easier to find in mid-trip. Sometimes people would tag up while riding as an indicator, and sometimes people would open an activity box (like bobblehead workshop or box o fun) and you could see that floating around the ocean. So it ought to be possible to make the boat appear on the map.

 

Thanks for the awesome and fun festival!

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

> @"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:

> Add in the fact that [the only real extrinsic reward for gauntlet](https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gauntlet_Chance) was removed, and it just feels like once you get the achievements done there's no need to do gauntlet. And that takes about 30 minutes tops outside of Liadri's 8 orbs and Turai Ossa.

 

You're telling me that they removed a somewhat direct way to get a monocle and put them in the flooded loot table that is zephyrite chests instead?

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

well, I liked to hear the announcer down at the bottom, and the sounds of battle up at the arenas.

 

When you are visiting a carneval, you also hear everything happening nearby. So what is the problem? Gave the whole thing a more lively and 'this is a festival' atmosphere.

 

So: sound, good.

 

I had fun. I hated boss blitz after the second time. Because it is just a tedious waste of time. It isn't even hard. You stand there, sometimes dodge or do a step and roll your rotation. Over and over and over and over and over again. BB is almost as bad as Kourna!

 

Wished that Jennah would have had more lines. After hearing her speech for the umpteenth time, it becomes boring.

 

Cliffs were sweet. A lot to discover. A lot of hilarious, interesting or insightful npc chatter. Throwing some water at a certain cat was a nice touch.

 

But, overall, I am glad it is over. In my opinion all the festivals/holidays/whatever are way too long. After two weeks of Halloween I am fed up with it. Same for Winterday - which at least is well contained and a lot less annoying that way. Lunar new year is also nicely contained. But still. Shorter durations would probably be better.