
All right, so it’s a little bit harder to beat Drakkar at this point in Guild Wars 2. That’s fine. You kind of expect to occasionally fail as a result, yes. Not that this makes things any less frustrating when you’re standing there next to someone with a stupid name who just stood there and barely tapped Drakkar instead of actually doing damage… the sort of thing that could make you angry enough to just reach over and smack them. Only to discover that you can smack them. And it hurts. Because open PvP is on now.
Yes, for lore reasons and as a means of venting any and all frustrations you might feel after losing the Drakkar encounter, failing the encounter turns on open PvP for everyone standing in the zone afterwards. Developers have confirmed that this is intentional and it’s a short-duration thing, so it’ll only really happen right after the encounter is done, but it does create a little more incentive to get your act together and beat that boss. After all, if you’re not trying very hard, your teammate who is trying will know whom to blame.
@ConnorEFallon someone found the thing.
— Clayton Kisko (@ClayKisko) February 11, 2020
Source: Reddit
this is going to be incentive for trolls to fail the event on purpose
Heh that’s pretty funny, a shame the PVP in this game is a joke though…
While the idea is nice, I don’t think it fits the “carebear” target user of the game. They should have introduced open pvp situations since day one if they wanted a community that could stand this little nice choices.
Even though I’d be killed with 99% probability in that case I can say it’s a fun feature. Good punishment for not killing the boss. If that happened for every single world boss that’d have ruined the game for many people I guess but implemented just for Drakkar it’s a nice addition and in accord with the story.
Yeesh-

Oh good. Even more reeason to never go anywhere near content. Just what I was looking for.
(Have I mentioned how completely I hate PVP? I think I might have mentioned that before.)
So way point away and don’t participate. It’s a very short duration, like maybe a minute long. It’s really just a fluff thing because of the lore implications of the Whispers taking people over. Plus when someone downs you you just turn invulnerable and PVP gets turned off and you can heal yourself back up. So even if you stay it takes you 5 seconds to get back into the game.
It’s PVP. I’ll avoid participating by finding out what zone this happens in, and then never going there. Ever.
I’m also completely aware that the devs care exactly 0% what I think about it, and that my one tiny datapoint is completely meaningless in their metrics. I’ll do it anyway. Because I really don’t have the language skills to express how completely I hate PVP.
so literally i get all my friends who want open pvp to just stand there and do nothing and then we murder targets via comms targeting? awesome anet lol.
Literally smiling ear to ear that this option’s finally available XD
It’s not the first time the story has enabled PvP.
Good to know. Even *less* reason to buy that expansion, since I’d have to skip the story anyway.
To be fair, unless you’re playing the story in a group, the only people you can attack are the NPC companions. It’s hardly a major feature of the mission and you certainly aren’t forced to attack anyone. You just can.
And the fact that it’s even possible is 100% why I’d avoid it. I do not do PVP content. Not even “solo runs through PVP content.” Is PVP possible? If yes, then I’m out.
Bye
It’s very fitting for the story they’re telling – everyone around you is having their motivations and thoughts twisted by Jormag.
If it were something that lasted for any length of time, or if the consequences of defeat were serious that’d be another matter. But as-is? I thought it was fun when it happened.
If you’re genuinely worried about it from a “this stresses me out and I don’t want to deal with it” standpoint, the event only happens once every couple of hours, and since it only happens if the event fails, it happens at a predictable time. You can type “/wiki et” to bring up the event timers page, and if the event is near the end and still going (the screen will tell you if they’re fighting Drakaar still), you can get someplace safe.
Drakkar was the only one keeping the peace…
Cool. Nice addition/feature there, ArenaNet.
I hate everything about it and have no desire to try the fight if this is what failure leads to. It’s already frustrating and depressing enough, I don’t need it thunderfucking my activities in the zone afterward.
This isn’t how you save your game, ArenaNet. This is how you fucking kill it.
Yes, I’m a salt mine right now.
Edit: Apparently, according to Reddit, this is only active for like 10 seconds? That’s infinitely less bad, but still not something that’ll motivate players to succeed. If anything, it makes trolling and intentionally failing the event more attractive.
Does nobody fucking think of how easily abused things like this will be?
I’m with you up until “Does nobody fucking think of how easily abused things like this will be?”. There should definitely be thought put into that, but I feel that developers spend waaaay too much time coding from fear.
Fear of “What if this exploited somehow?” Better take all the fun out to be sure it doesn’t.
Fear of “What is the spreadsheet says this isn’t balanced?” Better kill that fun ability to make sure this class has 0.5% variance with every other class.
Fear of “What if players get these rewards too easily?” better make a grind that is sure to kill their spirit to ensure everyone has “earned” their reward
I think it’s a poor idea and a sign of a development team flailing around for ideas, but I think it’s infinitely better to try something that may be fun than not do something out of the fear it may be abused.
it can be abused, which I GREATLY dislike, however, a bigger issue to me is that this is an intentional design decision and what that means for the future of the game. One of my biggies on PVE content is any content where you do *not* want to see other players may not be “good” content.
one of the things about GW2 is you were never unhappy about seeing other players cause in general they could only help or at the very least not absolutely hurt what you’re doing but this shows an intentional bend away from that design philosophy. Sure it’s only 10 seconds… “no big deal”, but is this the beginning of a slippery slope? 10 seconds this time, 20 next time, 60? 120? entire “PVE” content zones with perma-open-PVP status? Sure that’s hyperbolic reaching but given that this isn’t the first time they’ve tested the waters of PVP in PVE content, well… it makes you wonder.
I’ve said before: I’m all for Anet reusing existing maps for PvP. I would LOVE to have like a WvW non symetrical map in the form of for instance, Mount Maelstron. I really think they could add that to PvP and make the fight based on Whispers, Vigil and i forgot the third.
But opening PvP on a game that is mainly PvE? No. Even for one second, NO.