Embark Beach: Complete Failure for Grouping

I LOVE Embark Beach. It gives me a cool place to talk and if I ever feel like checking a Hardmode Mission off of my to do list it's easy access.

I can't complain about the nice amount of people to play with, but I must admit Embark Beach hasn't caught on yet well for players or traders.

It's day 2. I just went there to see what was up: Today's Z-Mission? Grand Court. # of People at Embark LFG for it? 0 (Guess where the PUGs are forming for it.) Today's Z-Vanquish? Holdings of Chokin. # of people LFG for it at Embark Beach - 2. (Again, guess where most people are forming parties to do it - Mihanu Township!)

But the biggest hint that it is indeed going to be a giant "FAIL" is that there were only 7 or 8 people doing Trade business there. (Traders go where the people are)

People can't have it both ways.

Either the game is too easy that giving pve-only skills to heroes is overpowered or the game is hard enough that you need to waste time tweaking builds.

As you can see I said boreas seabed. You said DoA and Kathandrax (which is a medium difficulty dungeon).

Of course you also gave the example of fire elementalists. Fire elementalists doing damage in HM?

I dont think the intent was to form up for the Zaishen stuff, but to form up for the *NON-Zaishen* stuff. Like this weekend is EOTN bonus points, so people might be LFG to vanquish and/or do dungeons in Embark Beach. I know I will be if my guildies are AFK.

The game is way easy for some people and way hard for other people. The point of Embark Beach is for people who have trouble with the game to ask for help and join up with others. I consider myself an average player. I cant do speed clears, but I know all the missions and bonuses in all 4 campaigns by heart and can lead any group. Dungeons, DoA, and UW I'm weak at, so I would be looking for help.

My three oldest chars have been everywhere and beaten everything, but my other chars have not. I am looking forward to going to Embark Beach and seeing what people are LFG. It would take much more time to travel to each Mission Outpost that I need and see who's LFG.

Now if we can just keep the trading in Kamadan, I'd be happy.

I agree with all those points.

So far, I've only seen a handful of people LFG for other things - never more than 2 or 3 at a time. How long they're waiting to get a party going may play a part in that. If people are finding help with missions/quests at EB fairly quickly, that may explain it. But, if it's not any faster than finding a group in the starting area, then those people won't bother after a while. If it is faster, word will spread and they will come.

EDIT: As the Weekend announcement was wrong (a first for A-Net), I retract my statement about this weekend being the first big test for EB.

If embark beach works properly you won't see people there. duh!

The whole point of embark beach is to get people out of the outposts and into the zones.

It doesn't sound like you wanted it to succeed if you waited all of 6 hours after release to complain and then not post again. Did you consider Drunkard, Pre-Searing, minion UI, and heroes are things that just might affect the number of people joining PUGs right after the update?

By the way, I spent over 2 hours last night with a random player starting over in Nightfall. I had nothing to do, so I thought: why not? We had a good time and it's owed to Embark Beach.

was there for awhile earlier, and people wherent forming groups from what i could see. thats a shame

I'm hoping this is the kind of thing that Embark was made for. Hopefully, then the dust settles, we'll see some people chlling out and waiting for something to do, some people asking for help and some people looking for a partner for some vq or a random mission (title hunting).

Formed two groups already
*thumbs up*

I think many people don't even know about it.

Hence the need for in-game announcements (like always). Something the Live Team keeps forgetting.

They have Zaishen Scouts with exclamation marks over their heads taking you to the beach, so at least there's that.

Is it just me or can you not travel to ToA (or the canthan/elonian god zones) from Embark Beach?

Still have to go through LA which reduces your party size to 6.

Or am I missing something here.

Complete Success is more like it. Give it two weeks.

I actually hope EB becomes the new trading post. People always sold stuff in LA and Spamadon. If they flock here then we can at least see all the sales at once. Plus, if I'm looking for an item or selling one(and getting bored waiting because I'm charging way too much and waiting for a sucker) and I see a LF something I'm interested in I might join. Win-Win

Calling it the Embark Beach update is just a marketing ploy. This update has been a long time coming for the hardcore solo player. What has always been appealing to GW and GW2 is that you can solo it or go full on PuG. Anet is just giving the player base what it has ben asking for. I can only thank Stumme for having the vision. The rest of the Anet crew deserve alot more thanks for actually pulling it off.

Spambark Beach is ment to be a place where you can PuG. So expect people chatting in local chat. I myself like to socialise when waiting for a PuG.

I expected Spambark to be the new Spamadan. And to be honest Spamadan has it uses (personally I don't know any experienced player who never bought or sold something in Kamadan). But Spambark would be a better place for trading cause you don't need nightfall to go there.

The marketplace we now call spamadan (and maybe in the future Spambark Beach) is irritating, but you can help to make it better/more organized.
1: don't buy/sell stuff from people spamming local chat but wsp the person saying you would have bought sold if he had advertised in the trade channel.
2: Don't buy/sell from people poluting trade channel by repeating there advert

Anet has given us a new town with potential to be a great addition. If it is a success is not for Anet to make it a success but to us, as the player base.

Yes Anet could make some improvements and I hope they do, but in general they have given us an opportunity. It is up to us as a community to do what we want with it.

Party search took a wile to get up to speed as well.

I seem to remember it took months.

Mission outposts only, ToA is not a mission outpost.

Bark! Bark! Bark!

"How typical of humans. You have to band together in order to overcome things? Please."

/laugh

My thoughts exactly..

My critique is that the travel interface is too cumbersome. There are more people in Ice caves of sorrow than embark beach because you only have a button click to enter the mission there. In EB, you have to run all the way to the correct person and have a lengthy chat. If there were a "travel" button with a travel menu like the "enter mission" button, then people may see EB as a convenience rather than a hassle. It would be even less hassle if you jumped straight into the mission from EB. (It would be REALLY popular if you could jump straight into a DUNGEON from EB).

It seems you're upset about gw players' stupidity, not EB itself.

And the majority of players, actually, majority of people in anything, ever, being stupid isn't exactly new.

At the same time something that discourages? But I thought you could team up with random people 6 years ago... My bad, I guess :/

As if. The only spaming I see is the damn guild spamming.

Traders still stick to Kamadan and LA, when they actually SHOULD go to EB.
You can just collapse the trade section and hide the trade chat, and it's as if they weren't there.

As for Shing Jea conversations, they are fine. It's good to have people socializing.

But the guild spammers, they should just... I don't know... suffer from sudden cardiac death or something.
They won't use the search panel, since they usually are trading too, so they want the search message for their trades, and keep using the local chat to spam unwanted messages ever 3 seconds.
They are like innocently walking on the street and suddenly being approached by a mad man that decides to follow you for hours, shouting at your ear.

Are they getting paid for annoying players or something?

ive tried pugging abit today, and not just embark beach, and either theres nothing much happening, other than being told its easy with heros :\

i see people forming for zb though, but thats it pretty much. oh and paying for a run through a dungeon

I don't get the Zaishen Scouts 100 %.. if you click on Travel on your full map Embark is one of the destinations.. so those scouts are part pointless?

Maybe to let people who aren't aware that Embark Beach was implemented know that it's open.

Besides that, can't see any reason for them being there.

Well yea for inexperienced players that could do it

There was no reason for Embark Beach, which is why no one is using it. It is a solution for a problem that doesn't exist. If they moved the ZV to a sign post at GToB no one would ever go there.

Some of the guilds pay "recruiters" with platinum for however many people they recruit.

Best thing you can do is report them for spamming. They tend to jump districts a lot, to keep from being reported... so what will often happen is you see them spamming, you type in "/report in-game-name" and by the time you've hit "enter," they've changed districts.

The way around that is, when you see them spamming, type the full report text out - "/report in-game-name" and then copy it (or leave it waiting if you're not chatting with someone else). Wait about 2 minutes for them to make the cycle through the districts, and as soon as their spam pops up (paste first, if need be), hit enter.

I've yet to find any of them that are faster at leaving the district than I am at hitting "enter." LOL

Correct me if im wrong, but i dont belive anet bans people for trying to get people to join their guild.

Please answer me this:

Why the need for a new location? all the features of Embark Beach should have just been added to Great Temple of Balthazar (MANY people like to chat and organize inventory there).

Btw can we implement a Warp-To-Their-District feature by simply double clicking them in the window or a button?

This. TwelveCharactersDangit

I'm still finding pugs just fine. However those pugs are made on the mission outposts themsleves.

i think its because some people will spam the message like 10 more times in a row. like this spamming would get us to join them. lols

I would like to add to my critique a fairly alarming logical quasi-proof regarding EB. The following assumptions are included in this argument:

1) Given a pair of specific points, one representing a start "situation" and the other representing a desired end "situation" (vanquishing goals, missions, etc), any given human will attempt to follow the *apparent* path of least resistance in traversing from start to finish, where humans have the power of choice to determine what the end point is. (Finishing a mission fast and smelling the roses along the way are two different end goals)

2) Given a list of possible end goals (described previously), the *majority* (not all) of humans will choose an activity that advances them toward some form of achievement. (i. e. creates *apparent* progress toward a desired end goal)

3) I can be argued that traveling to a desired mission outpost from a random location is faster using map travel than EB in many situations.

Now to include the relevant facts regarding EB and guild wars as a whole:

1) EB only connects to *mission* outposts, not every outpost.
2) The developers have gone to great lengths in campaigns released later than prophecies to ensure the missions therein are completed consecutively.

Now to follow the given data to some meaningful conclusions:

At any given time, due to the linearity of campaign mission progression, a character will have at most 4 active normal mode missions to complete that could be entered with a team of a possible 52 missions (Tihark orchard being a solo mission). At any given state, a player is incapable of completing missions ahead of these possible 4 (fact 2), and unwilling to complete missions behind these possible 4 (assumption 2). This logic does not extend to Hard mode, where a player (assuming they completed normal mode first) has access to any mission in any order. However, that player will still be unlikely to repeat any HM missions they have already done (assumption 2).

Zaishen missions add the alure of *apparent* progress to the act of re-completing a previously completed mission. Therefore, there are a large amount of people that would be looking to complete this mission. However, due to EB's cumbersome interface (assumption 3), people will be more likely to mass at the mission outpost than EB. The zaishen bounty and zaishen vanquish do not always start from mission outposts and are hindered by trying to use EB as a launch point due to 6 person max parties in LA and 4 person max parties in Kamadan.

This therefore reduces the number of people who can use EB to a set of players who are trying to complete a large number of HM missions. People completing normal mode missions will be hindered as others who have completed one of their possible 4 specific missions are unlikely to join with them (assumption 2).

Missions that people are willing to repeat due to the rewards or challenge of doing so are not represented in EB (UW, FOW, Urgoz, Deep, and DOA).

Due to the limited use of EB as presented above, I predict it will loose what popularity it has (currently consisting of the "new zone smell" so to speak), and will be largely ineffective without an overhaul to its system. The lack of people will drive players to search for parties the old fashioned way or use heros.

It is important to note that the success or failure of EB is NOT a reflection of guild wars players desire or lack thereof for social interaction or party play as EB is inefficient by design. Human nature follows the path of least resistance and, as shown above, that path rarely goes through EB.

It's so my level 5 elementalist in prophecies can get to embark beach even though she hasn't been to a port yet

You're forgetting about people going for the Protector or Guardian titles. Those folks are going to be going through old mishes that aren't necessarily the current ZMish, and they might do them repeatedly if they continue to fail to get the reward.

Nonetheless, with 7hero very few people will be pugging NM mishes (and most of those will probably be people lacking NF/EotN and will be trying to do Proph/Factions mishes, which are unpopular to begin with) except for those very few mishes that involve group splits or carrying objects (and even then some of these are manageable - despite the wiki's dire warnings, I managed to 7hero master's for Gyala Hatchery yesterday with only a couple of close calls). So we are pretty much down to people running hardmode, and once again we have 7hero butting in and taking away a large percentage of the pug base.

So even though you missed a few points, you're pretty much right. I think most people are using EB only to pick up ZVanqs and (as I do) for faster travel between continents.

My suggestions for improving EB:
Add transport to town nearest to current ZBounty and ZVanq (this one I'm a little iffy on)
Add transport to ToA/ZKC/CoS and GoA (it'd probably be a lot easier to find UW/FoW groups if people weren't spread out across 3 continents, and having a more convenient base for forming DoA groups would be nice too)
Add transport to dungeon entrances (this would really encourage people to do the dungeons outside the plot progression, I think)

Whether or not NCSoft chooses to take action, global chat spam violates the Rules of Conduct(5) and the User Agreement(4j).

I think Embark Beach is a fantastic addition, although I could not care less for its primary intended function of grouping. Instead, I use it as a central travel hub and convenient place to create and adjust my party of heroes since the Guild Hall sets skills to PvP versions. The problem of chat spam is easily solved.