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The original was posted on /r/guildwars2 by /u/CLorenzoH on 2024-11-12 06:24:00+00:00.
Introduction
Guild Wars 2 (GW2) has always been celebrated for its dynamic Meta Events and collaborative gameplay. However, a growing issue threatens to tarnish this experience: Multi-Account Leechers exploiting Meta Events, particularly the "Infusion Meta Train".
This post delves into how these leechers are disrupting the game, the impact on the community, and potential solutions to address this problem.
What’s the Issue?
Meta Events in GW2 are big coordinated activities that culminate in challenging boss fights, rewarding players with rare drops like exclusive skins, novelties, precursors or infusions (cosmetic auras that enhance character models) fetch high prices on the Trading Post (TP). The older the game gets, the easier Metas turn to be due to power creep but there are some that still fail often.
The Infusion Meta Train involves a series of events leading to a final boss fight, including:
- Pinata on Crystal Oasis
- Chak Gerent on Tangle Depth
- Octovine on Auric Basin
- Death-Branded Shaterrer (DBS) on Jahai Bluff
- Drakkar on Bjora Marches
- Dragonstorm (DS) on Eye of the North
There are also a very long Meta events leading to a final boss fight, including:
- SooWon on Dragon’s End
- Eparch on Inner Nayos
These events require significant time and coordination, making them prime targets for exploitation by players using multiple accounts to maximize rewards without genuine participation. These problem leads into:
- Economic Incentives: High-value rewards like Infusions and Legendary Gen 3 Variants incentivize multi-account leechers.
- Event Timing: Leechers target specific server times, making it difficult for legit players to compete.
How Leechers Disrupt Meta Events?
Multi-Account Leechers undermine the integrity of Meta Events in several ways:
- Non-Contribution: They fail to damage bosses, stay AFK, or use minimal actions just to claim rewards.
- Event Manipulation: By scaling events based on player count or using multiple accounts, they skew event mechanics.
- Credit Hoarding: They only engage when bosses are low on HP or use hidden locations to claim kills.
- High queues: Leechers, using one or multiple accounts, take several spots from genuine players willing to do the event filling the map and creating high queues.
What Are The Examples of Disruptive Behavior?
Dragon’s End Meta Leechers:
- Stay away from events on waypoints, airships or hidden somewhere in the map while looking at HP progress.
- Hit SooWon at 100%, then drop to the bottom of the tower’s platform. Or wait until the last 20% to join the fight once there's no mechanic left to deal with. Hit the boss once or twice, fully die, stay AFK for the time it takes to kill the boss.
- AFK on green islands during split phases.
- Use alt accounts to taxi into events, disrupting coordination.
- Loot 20 raw gold and other valuables drops with minimal effort
Inner Nayos Leechers:
- Stay away from events on waypoints, portals that lead to the boss chamber, use mounts to get above the fight on safe spots, stay on some out of combat safe spots on ground level.
- Remain dead during the fight scaling up the event and make it harder.
- Use teleport to friends (T2F) to hit at last percentages and get rewards.
- Loot rare drops with minimal effort.
Public Instances (50 man squad, DragonStorm / SotO Convergences) Leechers:
- Stay away from events on waypoints or hidden somewhere in the map while looking at instance progress.
- Loot rare drops like Memory of Aurene or Supreme Rune of Holding with minimal effort.
What is The Impact on The Community?
The rise of Multi-Account Leechers has several detrimental effects:
- Impact on trading post prices and hence GW2 economy.
- Event Failures: Increased failure rates discourage legitimate players from participating.
- Toxic Environment: Since metas require coordination and some of them time, players feel their time is being wasted and get angry. Some players even taunt others to make things worse.
- Burnout: Players experience real-life stress and/or health issues due to ongoing disruptions.
- Player Retention: Frustration leads to decreased engagement and players avoiding content or even quitting the game.
- Community Division: When the game is not treated as that, and instead things get personal (quite easy when people carry leechers) it may lead to sectarianism (who's friend of who) and paranoia.
What about commanders?
There might BE some impact to commanders (and also from my personal experience):
- Rookie commanders: New commanders may struggle with failing events and face the toxicity of failing the Meta since they get to be the easiest target to point at.
- Burnouts: Some commanders face real-life health issues due to dealing with toxic interactions.
- Quitting: Persistent issues lead commanders and experienced players to quit, reducing the pool of experienced leaders and players to do the Meta.
Why Aren’t These Issues Being Addressed?
Several factors contribute to the persistence of Multi-Account Leechers:
- Insufficient Tools: There are no tools because ArenaNet doesn't fight multi-boxing.
- Lax Enforcement: ArenaNet allows using several accounts under the restriction of not using macros to move those accounts at the same time. By that definition, ArenaNet allows staying AFK on one account while playing on the other and vice-versa.
Are There Any Proposed Solutions Personally?
There are multiple suggestions and discussions that have been thrown out to me from feedback from this long essay. Some of them are:
1. Instanced content.
Allowing players to create instances in the same way Convergence CM works.
Pros:
- Same way Convergence's CM works, it reduces the chance of a meta failing.
- There's no queue due to being instanced. Population increase: if there's control over what's going on, more people will be willing to join if there's a guaranteed spot and success.
Cons:
- Open world maps being emptier. Enhances segregation based on likeness.
- Aggravates leeching problem since it doesn't get rid of leechers and open world metas get worse for not organized players.
2. Contribution Base Rewards
Just like in Heart of Thorns or Secrets of the Obscure, metas have implemented a participation progress measurement. Regarding convergences, participation decreases over time while not actively playing. The improvement proposed would be:
- Implement a participation progress on meta events.
- Implement a participation progress decrease on players being AFK.
- Lock high value rewards to +90% max participation. Some meta events may have a 100% participation cap while others have a 200% cap.
- Valuable loot should be tied to reaching at least 90% of the max cap, which would be 180% participation in Convergences.
3. Rework Rewards System
There have been suggestions to:
- Loot Bound to Accounts: Prevents trading and exploitation of Meta Event rewards.
- Rework / Reconsider / Limit Legendary Variants: Decrease the availability or cost of high-tier Legendary items.
Conclusion
The rise of Multi-Account Leechers in Guild Wars 2 is a pressing issue that threatens the integrity of Meta Events and the overall community experience. Addressing this problem requires a combination of improvements based on player experience perspective.
I would like to ask the community what other solutions could be useful and, eventually, raise the issue to ArenaNet to make open world experience fun again.
I would like to personally thank the people who I interacted with. They helped me make this whole long essay by giving me feedback and multiple revisions before I make it go Public. I hope with this post it can help make a change for one of my favorite mmo-rpg games.