Celestial Chefs: Why am i killing myself for this?

Well it built a sense of screaming and cursing, anyway.

I believe that although parts were fun, the mechanisms that allowed for people to go afk and receive rewards need to be reconsidered.
What happened in many of the districts was that 50% or more of the people in the district were not there, therefore leaving it to the people who had taken the time to do some of the farming, to scratch around/ this together with some of the items being hard to get (see smoking remains, ebon spider webs etc) built the level of frustration.
I believe that the "being in town at a certain time to get a hat" dynamic has to change and that players must have some form of interaction in order to receive other rewards (be it handing over one item during one of the time frame activates the "get reward" switch).
I know that next year, if it is the same, I will be on for the opening session when most are actually there, then not bother again as I don't feel any "community spirit" in assisting people who just come into districts or sit in districts to leech of others because they decide they dont want to bother with making the slightest of effort.

I must disagree. I "killed myself" gathering ingredients (my guildies weren't interested in the event and prefered... GvG... *gasp*) and hunting fortunes. Just to find that even for that I might not be rewarded 'cause the piggie from the stars didn't have one of the ingredients, whereas afkers got several rewards doing nothing in other districts.

And no, I wasn't satisfied to get things for the others in a pure altruist way. My "morals" (as so many people seems to refer here) say that if you spend time and dedication to something, you will get rewarded, whereas if you don't, you will get nothing. If only it would have been a real collective effort... Or if the reward was based on skill instead of farming grind... But the sad truth is that if people had max ingredients, that was due to one guy who gathered all the ingredients and saved the entire district (kudos to all these people)...

After having noticed that I was indeed loosing my time for the others, I just let this night (I'm on Euro servers) my two account AFK in Shing Jea Monastery and went sleeping. This morning I had +2 minipigs, and 54 red bags. Yup. Welcome to Leech Wars.

I loved the event, rollerbeetle was excellent, the piggies cute, the quests hilarious etc...

But expect next Canthan New Year to become like Fort Aspenwood.

There would be neato solution:

Dishes/Traps/whatever completed per-party - gives reason to hunt down stuff, you have limited amount of people you can depend on and just afking will net you nothing.

---

As its is now, there is no point in gathering stuff next time - i did get all of those items, invited people i had in friends list to my disctrict when i spent it, but frankly, i dont exactly enjoy giving freebies to afk leeches, kids who cant act decently and people who didnt even bother getting one ingredience, it just spoiled it for me.

If i knew mechanics of event i definitelly wouldnt gather all of it.

next time, just afk in some district and you will get more than enough of minis. preferably in district where alliances like DVsomething are likely to gather.

Maybe you're just being selfish.

Hard work and dedication does not gaurantee reward. Doing nothing doesn't mean you will get nothing. Ask Paris Hilton. Welcome to real life.

better idea would be....for those people who contributed at least 1 ingredient they get a special aura (like you get with the sugar high)....and if the dist gets all the dishes, then the people with the special aura (only get one no matter how many ingredients you gave in---and it would disappear after the pig shows up or if you log off/change dists--just like when the sugar high ends)...would get the special thing (minipet or whatever) while the rest of the people would only get the red bags and the mask.

and next year is indeed the year of the rat...geez time flys. The rat is the first animal that responded to the god's call, the pig the last....so the rat is the first year and followed by the other animals in order they came, ending with the pig who came last.
(notice my avatar is a rat....... )

the problem is they don't think things through to their logical conclusion (anet that is), and don't anticipate how the collective mentality will react to a given situation. This is yet another case of how anet designs something meant to be played or resolved in a certain manner, only to completely miss that mark.
It took till near the end of the event for what I believe anet intended to actually happen: guilds hosting districts where they had all the ingredients, to alleviate all the uncertainty and chaos (and wasted time).
The lack of information going in to this really detracted from its execution.

I didn't go collector hunting. Just looking at the lists made me shake my head.

I did the forune quests on 3 or 4 characters, hung around for the finale just to see what would happen. I didn't expect to get anything, as I didn't have anything the chefs wanted. but ended up with a pig (which had eluded me for the 200+ fortunes I'd burned through... so I was happy), gift bags and the mask. I am happy, but curious what people who'd gone to the trouble of collecting the chef items got.

Apparently they got the same as me?

I am... rather confused. Like I said, looking at the chef list had made me shake my head. Unless pre-stored, amassing just one of each of those items would have taken some time... and the people who took the time got nothing more than I did... plus the satisfaction they had provided me (who'd done no collector hunting) free loot.

So while I personally enjoyed the parts of the festival I partook in, I must say I feel sorry for the collectors out there. A bit more information about the function of the chefs could have greatly reduced the amount of time people spent collecting without revealing anything about what the 'prize' would be. Even if they didn't get a bonus for contributing to the chefs (I think a bonus would have been nice, but that would have just opened another problem (ie. farmbots reaping the rewards)), they wouldn't have felt compelled to collect 1 of each ingredient and thus feel completely gibbed for not being rewarded for time wasted.

My 2c... I had a nice time. With all the kerfuffle surrounding the rollerbeetle race/cheaters, I'm kind of glad I didn't give that a go either.

Well those ingredints collectors get a lunar coin for each item they brought to chef.

Oh? I guess that's something. But time would have been better spent farming coins than those collector items. :/

A guildie and I spent most of saturday getting all ingredients. I went into sunday carrying 2 of each and some spares. (I got my guildie's set of ingredients as well in the end, his flue got so bad he couldn't play sunday.) I visited a few pig-feedings and didn't contribute anything at all because other people were doing just fine. I got a few piggies while saving my own ingredients for later events.

I was sorely tempted to sell a full set for a good amount of cash, but decided I wanted to do some cooking myself. It's not like I need the gold. I did eventually spend them all, twice being almost solely responsible for making the dishes. Getting just a few lunar tokens was a bit of a disappointment, but I wasn't too bothered, I had fun gathering all the stuff.

One other thing that wasn't really fair about the setup: while I practically made all five dishes by myself twice, I got a lot less of a reward than another guildie who turned 250 Celestial Essences (he'd been saving them for no particular reason) into 250 tokens over 2 or 3 runs of the event, just by rapidly offering them over and over to the chef who asked for them, before he moved on to the next ingredient. Quantity before quality, apparently.

No real complaints here, though I got to say, it could've been better.

Nope they made it easy to get the PVE mini pet even gave it to people who did nothing very sad

I have never been disappointed by an event before. My problem with it is that there was was really no point to gathering anything if the reward for doing it sucked so badly. I should have spent my time learning to cheat at roller beetles. Then I could have gotten a reward worthy of my efforts. I really like the scavenger hunt idea - that part was fun - but the reward was not worth it at all.

I agree - this is the first event that disappointed me. I usually really enjoy their festivals and events but this one just plain frustrated me. I wonder many may have afked not because they really wanted to be greedy so much as they were just sick and tired of the whole thing. They wanted the mask but didn't want any more frustration. I know that's the reason I AFKed the first one, which I have never done before with any festival - I just didn't see any point in putting in more time to what seemed to be a waste of effort.

They had a lot of good ideas but very bad implementation - they just didn't think things through.

They only gave a day and a half to get a huge variety of ingredients - and I think most people thought you would have to have all of them to get anything so many people didn't try.

Meanwhile, they distracted people with the pigs in the fortunes - a really bonehead idea! People were out hunting fortunes instead of ingredients. That destroyed the teamwork of the event by making people frustrated when suddenly they had to hunt those ingredients in 24 hrs or less because they had been focused on fortunes for the previous day and a half. I contributed a little but just didn't have the time to get much by the time I found out what was really going on.

Then they tanked pig prices so those who paid a lot of money for one could feel really cheated.

They introduced a new special event without adequate trial (hence cheating in roller beetle) and then gave a major award for it so that the whole gw community could feel cheated and those who really won the award honestly could have their victory tainted.

And they put a quest for 25 tokens in a chapter of the game where you couldn't even turn them in until the fest was over (nightfall) unless you had bought another chapter or wanted your fortune read 25 times. And then they put a use for tokens into a chapter (prophecies) where the only way to get them was from the few that dropped from monsters because there was no fest related quest - now who in the world thought that one up?

It's no wonder people like the OP felt used and abused - Anet pretty much guaranteed that was going to happen.

And it's no wonder many others, who normally would try to help, wound up camping in town instead - by the time they found out what needed done, it was too late for them to really help.

I know that I got several pigs I didn't really deserve. But I felt bad about that so I gave them all away to people in Lion's arch who could not get them - the only two I kept were the one that I bought and the one that I found after about 380 fortunes.

Great Ideas - very bad follow through. C- on this festival for ANET!

Oh, and a huge A+ and thank you to those like the OP who literally saved ANET's bacon by sponsoring districts so others could get pigs!!!

Thank you also to those who were bringing fortunes over to Istan and trading at the fortune giver's rate so that Nightfall people could really take part too - your willingness to do that was greatly appreciated.

Finally, a huge congratulations to the many winners of roller beetle minis who won honestly - you deserve to enjoy your prize!

Doing something for the sole purpose of seeking an immediate reward = simple minded and selfish

Doing something because you know it's a good thing to do and understanding that the effects of what you do may not be immediately percievable = self actualized and wise.

Karma isn't just some elusive spiritual mumbo jumbo. When you make a positive action in someone elses life, they are more likely to return the action to another. This does not always happen, but the rule is generally correct. Making the world around you a more positive place makes the your world more positive. It's much like the earth's rotation, it may be subtle and even imperceptible, but it happens and the phenomena is still very real.

hm, guess I better quit my job

I don't think you should compare in-game rewards with your job. After all, you may need money from your job in order to survive. But I can't see why you can't survive without in-game money.

Try comparing this to something like.....lottery or gambling or something luxury.

The statement was in regard to generosity, and not meant to imply that any self serving act, if it wasn't obvious enough for you.

Archon, when no one has any clue about what's going to go down, there's no such thing as generosity to consider. There's only after the fact justification.

"WTF did I spend hours gathering all these ingredients for???"

vs.

"Oh.. Uh... Wow, I guess we'll chalk that one down to me being a generous and kind-hearted person then, eh?"

I dont mind helping others (i.e. farming my butt off so the whole district can get pigs) but I didnt like completing 2 dishes by myself (while most everyone else sat on their asses) in my very first event and still failing and getting nothing.

Karma and generosity are great things but I prefer playing video games because they're fun. And part of the fun is getting results for something I did. Sort of like how a hamster pushes a button for a pellet. Face it, we're all being conditioned in any video game we play.

I'd hate to be lumped in with the selfish folks who only want things for themselves and scream when everyone gets the same things they do. Oh and Karma did reward me at the end, after two events that failed for me, I got several pigs while AFKing when I slept. I would have preferred getting the pigs when I was actually participating though.

And Gli makes a good point.

This assumes that everyone that gathered ingredients did so before the event started. Most people I know actually started collecting the ingredients after the events started and people learned what the cooks wanted the items for.

Those are the only people complaining.

The internet hasn't gone that nuts that we have people hanging around complaining they weren't rewarded for doing things they knew they wouldn't be rewarded for before they started doing them.

But we're getting there.

Your little morality speech didn't apply to the early collectors, and wasn't needed by the later ones.

Most people I know collected before, so they would be prepared.

Had I wished to participate it would have *had* to have been 'before', because I would have only been able to attend the first 2 events before needing sleep then working the next day.

QFT. This post is so worthwhile that I'm reposting it in it's entirety.

Before posting any more, people should go to Wiki and read up on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Many of the posters are definitely feeding off the bottom.

And while you're all at wiki, go read about Victor Frankl. He said, to paraphrase, that we can't choose our circumstances, but we can choose how we will respond to them. He should know, as he survived the concentration camps in WWII.

Think about that before you whine some more about how unfair Anet is.

Some science for you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory

Only one falcon in a place full of doves is necessary to kill them all.
A perfect example in-game is Fort Aspenwood. Just play it.

Well, I'm a guest lecturer at our local university where I teach Operations Research, Simulation, and Queueing Theory. These topics also include gaming theory.

Having said that, I have absolutely no idea what you're post infers, and how it relates to the topic at hand.

If you're suggesting that XvArchonvX didn't consider gaming theory in his post, then I'd disagree. When considering gaming theory you must also look at the reward associated with an action. Goodwill can be a strong motivator, and Archon was referring to that. I believe that the majority of GW gamers are very simplistic in their approach, and only look at material rewards. Thus ebayers, leechers, etc. Some, however, look beyond the simple reward and realize that some things are more important than the simple accumulation of material goods.

Thus, the point of Archon's post, and my reference to Maslow and Frankl.

For a new year of discussion! Any thing different? and so new players can see this thread.

thread necromancy, bad...there are other threads about this already.

QFT. Or at least Prophecies.

Everyone who owns Factions but not Prophecies truly hasn't lived yet - and won't live much longer if I've anything to say about it!

i think it's hilarious that this thread has gone all philosophical and crap.

you guys do realize we're talking about a video game here?

Good Question. Considering no one is forcing you to do this....

Well, in our alliance we took this event as an opportunity to work together (one of those rare few times) and each guild is in charge of getting some ingredients. No one is forcing anyone to farm, we just want to have fun and get together on a particular district to tell jokes and await for the rat.

A really great way to get together with my alliance and have fun, after all, isn't this what we all play GW for? good 'ol fun!

OK, I missed the event last year (no pig for me!) and I've got a question:

Are you supposed to bring all the ingredients for ALL the chefs, or just all the ingredients for ONE chef?

You need to have only one ingredient for the chefs. Of course, it is better if you divide the work amongst different people. When the rat comes the chefs will ask for each particular ingredient in a certain order, you give him an ingredient, he gives you 1 lunar token.

I wish they would actualy confirm if Gaile is right about the rat being only available from lunar fortunes. After the whole polar bear fiasco i dont belive anything she says so we need an other source.

Last year if you handed in all the items for the feast you got a mini pig.

Now they talking about some other item that is unconfirmed.

Well I believe last year that one anyone had turned in the ingredients, the entire district got the prize.

Don't even bother. It's another time waster brought to us by our good friends at ANET. Let some other sucker do it for you. I was the sucker last year, not happening again this year.

The number of suckers will decrease after read your post. So let everyone turns to rat this year

Marketing tools; just as most of the festival quests are in the Monastery to get you to buy Faction.

There's more then one way to use a goodie.

Guys this thread is from last year.... .-.

Haha, Godwin's law in effect...