These missions and bounties are stupid

Same reward for each one. Today is slaver's exile, and same reward as going to kill some guy you might have to clear 5 mobs to get to. Maybe it makes it easy for the easy ones, but some of these can take hours. I finally cleared to frostmaw on my monk and it took over 2 hours. A couple last week took about 2 minutes each.

So I guess the only thing to do is skip the hardest ones and hope they start putting stuff up that makes sense.

The thing is they do rate the missions rewards, sort of. But even there they don't get it right. The Surmia one, takes forever with all the waiting and following and running around and it was worth 74 coins or something like that, and that can take over an hour with just 4 man group. While the ones that people can get run through take less than 5 minutes and give 150 coins in hard mode. Hell's Precipice normal mode doing the mission takes less time than Surmia normal mode if you're doing the bonus, but that one was 75 base, and to get 74 you needed to do surmia in hard mode with half the team.

Doesn't make sense to me. One or two days last week I ran all missions and all bounties on 6 of my 8 toons, in less than 2 hours total I think, all but one in hard mode, made 5 gold coins in just a couple days. The past 2 or 3 days they have either been too long or too hard (versus reward) to even bother with.

Who is going to waste 2 hours on some of these 5 level dungeons or nearly impossible dungeons for 140 tokens, and that is the stupidest thing, base reward is only 40, and hard gives an extra 100. 40 isn't enough for some of them in normal mode. Especially the 5 level dungeons ones. And the 100 on some of them isn't enough either. Frostmaw should have been 100 normal and 200 extra for hard mode. Anything with mutliple levels missions or bounties should give a hell of a lot more than just mapping into a town walking 4 feet and killing the thing in about 5 minutes. Or getting in with a farm group and doing it in about 45 seconds.

It was even worse before they raised the rewards, I wasn't doing hardly any of them, but even so, since they changed the pay out they have also increased the time it takes on most of them. So it is all relative I suppose.

I know they want too keep it fairly difficult to keep people from just farming coins all day on their different toons, but some of these things are just ridiculous in terms of what you get. Like that squid in hard mode is even comparable to Forgewight, Frost maw, or even Z'hinn Monns in terms of difficulty or time needed to do it. Yet they all offer the same 40 base coins, and an additional 100 in hard mode.

The only one I have seen that was scaled correctly was the fire boss guy. In normal he is pretty easy, but takes two maps to get to. In hard its two maps but mobs are hard, you can skip alot, but the boss and his adds are just about twice as hard to kill. So 40 and 100 makes sense.

Like I said I guess you just have to pick and choose which ones you do and don't do.

no one pugs anymore. With these quests and dungeons people are starting to pug. No one is forcing you to do them. If you want the equip packs or something just farm and play normally then buy some.

Agree completely, and then the Ruins of Morah a few days ago. You just pay a guy to run it for you for 1k, it takes 3-4 mins and its worth 150 coins? compared to some really hard bounties for 140.
These really need to be scaled better, and balanced a bit better so NM gives a somewhat decent ammount.

Best thing to happen to Guild Wars in a long time, it gives you extra rewards for the things you want to do and if you dont like one dont pick it up. If you want to do the dungeons in HM then you have the perfect oppertunity to score some more rewards for your hard efforts and if you just want easy coins there are opportunities for that too.

I really think all of the missions should be limited to the 8 player ones, especially in Prophecies. I forgot how long and boring those Ascalon missions were, and it would've been even worse on normal mode.

Umm what I hate about ZQuest is that I have to do shit that I've already done - usually shit that has no replay value.

Chances are good that most people have already done most of the game. So what's left? What WOULD have replay value????

I agree with the OP that the coin rewards are a little out of kilter in some places, but in others, they seem to match--some bosses reward just a few coins, even in HM.

The coins are a marginal reward, really. It takes a while to earn a reward that might REALLY be valuable (i.e. the heavy equipment pack), and the value of those is likely to drop over time as more and more people get them, and continue to stack tokens as rewards.
They're simply a small incentive to get a portion of the population to replay content--or, in some cases, to play it, or in other cases, to PuG it.

Ironically, they're kind of a whammy to people who've already achieved Guardian and Protector titles. People who did that prior to the Z-coins really had to work for a very limited reward. People who waited--procrastinated, ignored the titles--get an extra incentive now to do it.

So like ya said in the OP...pick and choose. I've probably ignored more bounties--and especially more missions--than I've played.

THAT'S why they give them, along with the books, and offering hard modes. it gives the game a little more playability on the PvE side. Without hard mode, books, hardmode books, dungeons books et al, the PvE side of this game would be extremely limitted. granted it isn't a PvE game per se, and the PvPis enough to keep most people around, but they have a pretty unique and simple way to keep the game's longevity going. I like that.

What I don't like is how some of these are rewarded.

As far as pugging and all that, there is a big reason why people don't pug anymore, I made a post about it during the dual team quest, and how in a full human group (which apparent'y triggered at least 7 players on the other side) I failed and failed, but with myself anf H/H or 2 man teams (which gave us solo and H/H or 2 man team on other side) we breezed through it all in under NM time for masters, all rns under 25 minutes, except for one where the NPC bugged and we had to go back to get him to follow.

Either people have forgotten how to group or they don't know how or they don't play their classes correctly and have their Sabway, ROJ, or Discordway way heroo teams bail them out. But that is also another reason why I like some of the mission, they require little more than cookie cutter builds that a few runes and a little money anyone can get. but that's the point of the post. Some of them arestraight up ridiculously easy with any one or a combination of those makes ups, and should be scaled accordingly, others that require a mix up and God forbid a little skill or at least independant thought still offer the same, and other where all you do is pay some guy 1k and in 2 minutes you have 150 coins is a joke. All you need for 1200 or 1500 coins (depending on if you bought the 2 slots) is maybe 20 minutes and that mission or dungeon open on all of them.

Itis proabably too difficult to scale all of them, but some are obvious. Unless of course some of these are gifts to people as well as the farmer builds to get easy cash and easy coins.

Yeah but you're not going to get a Silverwing Recurve Bow from killing The Scar Eater. The Zaishen quests are supplemental to the reward that you would inherently receive from completing a task. If I kill The Scar Eater, the absolute best thing I could get is an elite Monk tome worth about 7k. If I go through Frostmaw's to kill the end boss, I've seen countless chests to open, countless bosses to kill for greens or e-tomes, and probably filled up my inventory on the way, that on top of the fact that a more difficult instance will (and in the example, definitely does) have some rewards possible that easily break the 100k mark.

Sure, killing a boss close to a town with no difficulty is easier and perhaps more time efficient strictly looking at the Zaishen rewards, but for the overall rewards you're getting a better time/money making opportunity in general with the addition of the Zaishen reward when you complete more difficult quests.

I like the zquests, bounties and zcombat. I just wish it would cycle through more missions and bosses. I also think the rewards should be adjusted because some of them are pretty silly.


Question, I'v never tried using more than one character to do zevents. Is it possible to use more than one character on the same account to get more coins? If so that would be very helpful.

Yeah, it is. You can take the PvE quests on any character that can access PvE, but once and only once per character 'til it cycles around again.

Tell the guy who's holding the gun to your head forcing you to do every single mission and bounty to read this thread. I'm sure he'll understand.

The phrase "the chase is better than the catch" works here. The "making your way and destroying" has always been better than the reward for me.

Please forgive my Newb question, I just started a few days ago. I have been reading these forums and have seen "PUG" many times, My question is what is that an abbreviation for?

Pick Up Group.
The random guys you meet in an outpost and form a party with.

Off topic:
Welcome!

Pick Up Group, if im correct xD

EDIT: pff...I got ninjad!

^ i dunno what pug stands for, but i know that it's a party consisted of random ppl that have never met be4(?) =]

Excellent, Thank You and the others for the response.

Hmm, You say "Any" character and not "Every" character, so I'm still unsure. Sorry. Z mission are character based and not account based, right? So I can complete a the zmission on one character and still be able to do it again on my others?

Thanks.


PS: I always thought Pug's stood for "Pug Ugly Groups". As a nod to their generally horrible coordination and the frequency in which they get beat.

PS2: I missed the "Yeah, it is". I'm tired and going to sleep. Thank you very much for the answer.

Get character one. This character is called "Roman Starclaw". Get character two. This character is called "Roman Starfang". And then the gamer. The gamer is called "Mr. Dude".

Mr. Dude decides to have a nice questing through on Roman Starclaw, until he notices Zaishen Missions. He completes a Zaishen Mission after several games of Alliance Battles and a bit of boss hunting, and wants to do them again, but a problem arises! He can't do them on that character again! He then gets sad and improvises some new ideas, then logs onto Roman Starfang, finds out that the quests are doable once per character, and continues on his merry way. He then tries the same on his PvP characters in Alliance Battles and finds out he can do the PvP quest on a PvP character! Then the Moon crashes into the Earth, the Earth falls out of orbit and then reality is torn into half wrapped up into a paper ball and then thrown into the dimensional bin.

Long story short, every character you make can do the quests.

You can do the hardmodes dungeons WITHOUT the z challenge and get the same oppurtunities you mentioned. The Z coins are supposed to be a little something extra or a little extra inscentive because a lot of people don't randomly do those dungeons/missions/bosses. Also not all the Z challenges have drops like that or even chests. So there goes half your argument right there.

But it isn't really about the money or what you MIGHT get. Hell I left the game 3 years ago or so, came back and lost about 60% of my net worth because Ectos used to trade for 12k now sell for 4300 if your lucky. So money isn't the end all be all of this game. It MIGHT be a shiney item that mght take some money/ectos to get, but there aren't too many things in the game that most guys who used to farm back in the day can't afford. I think I have just under 1500 ectos, not to mention over 500 but less than a thousand rubies, shards, and sapphires, not sure if anything in the game is worth that much now or not. But if it is who really wants it anyway? 99% of the people aren't going to recognize some uber weapon you spent all that money on, or if they do do they realy care? And if you H/H most of the time who sees it? And the guys in PvP have more important things to worry about than checking out people's gear.

But money isn't the point, money is EASY to make. Coins aren't they aren't tradeable and the only way to get them is in the challenges. it also isn't even the "worth' of the items you get, it is the actually accomplishment of earning it yourself. I could hvae bought 4 or 5 20 slot bags by now if I wanted to spend a million gold, but much better to spend a couple months and getting the coins and 'earning' them yourselves.

It was a good attempt, but I agree that the rewards often do not match the difficulty of the bounty/mission.

And yes, everyone's already done them. GW's been stale for a long time now. There's nothing they can do about it except show us some GW2 crap...which they wont.

EDIT: Yes, they are supposed to be just a little incentive so that if you're going to do the dungeon/mission/quest, you can get a little reward for it. However most ppl have already done everything in NM and HM in gw, making it kind of ironic.

Pugging for these missions is already on the decline. Basically, the same guys that really need someone to pull them through are looking for other players.
People collect the easy, fast and high reward missions and do them over the course of the week.

The number of missions seems also to be quite limited, there are quite a few Prophecies/NF/Faction missions that are not part of the rotation.

The amazing reward is still a bag. :>

Other than challenge missions, which are excluded? They seem to include all the primary missions.

Another problem is that the rotation got fubared in a patch a while back and we have had repeats where we should have had plenty left for the rotation before any repeats.

Zaishen Quests are not required. You can pick and choose what to do. Only when you feel that you MUST complete them are they an issue, and that issue is yours alone.

I've deleted many of the quests because I didn't feel like it. I did Frostmaw the first time it was given because I hadn't gone there in a while, the second time I deleted the mission as I had no desire to do it again so soon.

It's all up to you. They are completely optional.

I do the zquests for the rep points, and the coins are just a bonus. No need to do them in hard mode for that! As long as we're complaining about unfair rewards, can we get extra rep points for hard mode completion?

I'm just getting sick of seeing repeated quests. Seriously Anet, sort your game out. The complete lack of attenion to the repeats of quests isn't exactly giving off the right impression.

So, basically, the playerbase is asking for the following fixes:

1. HM zmish/dungeons in factions/EoTN need to hand out better faction points for HM.
2. Coin rewards need to be scaled based on the bounty/mission difficulty.
3. Z-challenges should include newer bounties and missions.

Did I miss anything else?

This is how I read the OP's post:

"Dear Anet,

Please put an everlasting fireworks in my inventory for the next update, and also a stack or two of gold zaishen coins.

Thanks,
Lazy and Greedy Player #203948"

To not sound too trollish, I think FengShui summarized it nicely, that while the Z-reward may be the same across the board for certain dungeons, it's the drop potential that makes a difference. Plus, I know that these z-quests has increased guild and alliance activity, so the rewards are a nice bonus to the fact that there are people to play with again.

Actually i have no interest in the firework, i just want the bags since i don't feel like spending 10 bux (real money) per storage panel.

As far as people playing, there haven't been any major updates to this game in over 3 years, the fact that as many people still play it as they do says a lot. But it is free and peopel always have it taking up space on their computers I am sure. I left for almost 3 years myself and come back every now and then again. But with no new additions there isn't too much people haven't done that they want to. These quests are just supposed to be something diferent.

Either way today was an easy mission with nornbear taking maybe 15 minutes to do in hardmode, while the bounty is over an hour in normal mode, so only did that once since it was only worht 40 coins. But that is the point of my post. Nornbear takes 15-20 minutes in hard mode, you kill about 40 mobs total and you get 105 coins. So pick and choose to be sure. So it is basically a lottery with these things, hoping you have them all open and then hoping they aren't too time consuming.

Well, things are easy with these quests.. Go PvP, learn to play, and somehow magically get into a good HA team. Get 350 Zoins per time you reach HoH (not even win it), rinse and repeat. 60% of the Zoins is for PvP, that's the idea behind em as well. Getting PvE players over to the people-killing. If you prefer PvE still : go farm there, pay up those plats for your bag, and continue your life.

If you just want the bag, I can recommend to just buy it and don't look back. You can find one for 40-50 ectos these days. Best investment I did in a long time.

No, that's the whole point. The Zaishen stuff encourages you to do things you wouldn't ordinarily pick up and do. If I get 140 Zoins and a chance at an Elite Tome for 5 minutes of work, I'm more likely to do it than I would have been for just the Elite Tome. Likewise, if I get 140 Zoins and a chance at an Emerald Blade for 1.5 hours of work, I'm more likely to do it than I would have been for the Kathandrax chest open by itself. That's what supplemental means.

If you're simply farming for highest Zoins/hr, then of course you're not going to consider the supplemental nature of the Zaishen rewards on longer or more difficult bounties/missions. If you're playing for the most cash/hr, opportunity/hr, or a more generally diverse playing experience, you'll entertain the notion of doing the longer/harder quests.

Look at it this way, if you go to a store and there's a "Buy one, get xxx free" offer, you're very interested even if you aren't highly considering the product. That would be like a boss. Very easy terms with very high matching per your input. If you go to a store and there's a "Buy three, get xxx free" offer, you'd be less interested in the bonus payoff unless you were already considering buying a set of whatever you're looking at. Is the supplemental bonus sufficient to justify the initial purchase? That depends on a number of factors including what items you're after and how badly you want the bonuses.

Maybe I think too logically, but to me if I want a chance at a chest drop I do the dungeon in hardmode regardless, just because it happens to offer 140 or so z coins isn't really enough inscentive to MAKE me want to do it when I don't feel like it. In other words, if I felt like doing one of those hard modes I would and have regardless of any extra inscentives added. BUT, I did the norn bear on all 6 toons it was available to yesterday simpley because it took me less than an hour to get 630 coins.

The chest rewards and possible boss drops are enough inscentive for the ones that take 2 or 3 hours to complete, adding 140 coins (the same as ANY bounty quests pretty much) isn't going to outwiegh the difficulty factor, that was the whole point of my OP, and since you can only have 3 active at a time you can't save them up until you feel like doing them.

The only thing it really does is fill those place with a mass of people (who usually aren't or weren't) good enough to do them H/H in the first place so it gives them an oppurtunity to clean up some of their odds and ends. So it helps serve some purpose for some people I suppose. Plus like I said it give farm build runners good business once in awhile.

But like I said, Nornbear offered 105 coins in hard mode yesterday, took 15 maybe 20 minutes if you had bad heroes gear to do. Day before forgewight takes 70-80 minutes in normal mode, 90-who knows if you get a couple bad pulls or a wipe or two in hardmode, and a lot of people can't do him in hardmode H/H, which also means they aren't very likely to do him in a group of live players hard mode either. And he was worth 140 coins. Now, had he been worth 300 or maybe 400 coins then I MIGHT have bothered to do him, but surely not for 140, and 40 as a base for normal mode is just ridiculous.

Same as with the mission in Nightfall that require at least 2 live people, because you can't take henchies, usually not worth the effort, and surely not worth the coins they offer. Which are dependant upon if you get masters or not to max out. Again, if the whole point was to get people to do them offer big rewards for the ones that take a lot of effort. Because to me that is their whole point, to get people to look at and maybe see content they might not do otherwise. Because I bet a lot of people haven't been to Duncan let alone killed him, and same goes for some of the places in Nightfall. So they probably need alitle more inscentive that others do, and like I said, thinking logically 140 coins isn't enough, when you can H/H other stuff in a fraction of the time for the same amount, regardless of whther you have seen THAt content a thousand times or not. it is still easier, thus makes more sense to do to them.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Zaishen_Quests

Definitely not.

Ummm just because not everything has happened yet Longasc, doesn't mean it won't.

*sigh*

You're still not getting it. "Thinking too logically" does not equal considering only your opinion and not the overall design mechanic of the rewards. The additional 140 Zoins for a difficult dungeon may not be a selling point to you, but they may be to someone who was intending on doing Frostmaw's someday but needed a little extra motivation. Would you have done Nornbear nine times in a day if you didn't have the extra incentive? I seriously doubt it. It's not about what you think is enough or not enough. Sure, I expect far fewer people to do Duncan the Black bounty than Assault on the Stronghold, but that doesn't mean the rewards are unfair. You have to look at the greater picture. As I already said, if you're interested strictly in the Zoins, do only the quests with a high Zaishen reward per time invested.

Believe it or not, there are other things to do and other reasons to play than gathering Zoins. You seem to ignore that fact.

Err, the fact that there are repeats are a function of a bug that occurred. One they have acknowledged. It's not fixed, but there are new missions/bounties being given out.

The "Cycle" is not finished. Can't say the pool is shallow when it's still being filled.

Prophecies:
- The Great Northern Wall
- D'Alessio Seaboard
- Bloodstone Fen
- Augury Rock
- Ice Caves of Sorrow
- Abaddon's Mouth

Factions
- Imperial Sanctum

Nightfall
- Pogahn Passage
- Rilohn Refuge
- Gate of Desolation
- Abaddon's Gate

EotN
- Warband of Brothers
- A Time for Heroes


only 13/69 missing and those should be available during the next months too, if they don't accidently wipe their check lists again

I'm wondering if we'll ever see those as Zmissions. I honestly think, given the content of those two missions, they're more likely to be bounties (go in, kill boss fast, done)