Serpent's Ire has a reward problem

Serpent's Ire is a meta event on par with Gerent or Tarir from HoT. Except for one major problem: the rewards. Aside from the very first time you complete it, when you get a part for the funerary armor collections, the rewards are PALTRY for the time spent. You can get a better return on time for almost any other meta in the game, especially with how often it fails and thus gives effectively nothing. This is resulting in people finishing it only once and then never participating again.

For Gerent and Tarir, the difficultly gradually dropped as organized groups developed and strategies were found. This happened because groups were running the metas over and over again for rewards, and thus iterating until they found methods for doing it reliably, if not easily. That is not happening with Serpent's Ire. Because of the bad rewards, people are finishing it and then going to other metas, which means Serpent's Ire is in a perpetual state of being done only by people who haven't done it before, or at least haven't succeeded. Because there is no accumulation of leaders or iteration of the techniques to do it, the meta fails more often than not, which combined with the generally poor rewards is leading to people who are on the map, but have already finished, refusing to come. This results in the meta increasingly being under-staffed, resulting in an ever increasing probability of failure, resulting in increasing frustration for those who are still trying to get it and increasing vows to never do it again.

The end result of this is that Serpent's Ire is becoming increasingly difficult, increasingly prone to failure, and increasingly a brick wall for those just getting to it. At the current rates, due to the requirement for large groups to finish the event, it is likely that a time will soon come when it is FUNCTIONALLY IMPOSSIBLE to complete due to abandonment by most of the community. It needs major re-balancing, both for a difficulty and rewards standpoint, and it needs to have it soon, before the Community's Ire at it builds to the point where people refuse to even look at it again even if changes are made.

I haven't even participated in this event yet, and I've already heard very bad things about it, not just here, but from my guild mates as well.

I am not looking forward to this.

You may be interested in reading and participating in these threads:

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/7612/serpents-ire-feedbackhttps://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/5753/why-doesnt-anyone-do-serpents-irehttps://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/6138/top-complaints-essentially-all-about-vabbihttps://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/8101/serpents-ire-meta-event

We haven't seen any reaction to it and those are fairly buried at this point so it dosen't hurt to bring it up again, especially since I came to the same conclusion independently.

Pretty sure all the PoF meta events are severely undertuned in terms of drops and rewards.

Until PoF releases a meta that opens an underground city with 50 chests to loot, it'll always be inferior loot.

@Endless Soul.5178 said:I haven't even participated in this event yet, and I've already heard very bad things about it, not just here, but from my guild mates as well.

I am not looking forward to this.

The breakbars on the forgotten priests are over-scaled, and when u finally do break down that break bar, u are only given a very small window to dps the priest. This event is still do-able but it will take multiple attempts(with a 90 minutes wait between each attempt).

The dual legendary battle (at the end of event chain) is just plain unfun with poor mechanics; at times, the bosses will just go invulnerable. The hydra is frustrating to do battle against, they are the shrooms of PoF, with plenty of CC at their disposal, their meteor attack has almost no telegraph, so you will get interrupted often. And when u do finally beat the event, u are rewarded poorly for ur efforts. Do it once for collection and never bother with it again.

@Unknown.3976 said:

@Endless Soul.5178 said:I haven't even participated in this event yet, and I've already heard very bad things about it, not just here, but from my guild mates as well.

I am

not

looking forward to this.

One of my guilds was able to do it in one smooth try. Like most of the major metas in the game, it's about knowing what's involved in the fight. Prepare for the mechanics, including CC and his invulnerable stage.

@Unknown.3976 said:The dual legendary battle (at the end of event chain) is just plain unfun with poor mechanics; at times, the bosses will just go invulnerable. The hydra is frustrating to do battle against, they are the shrooms of PoF, with plenty of CC at their disposal, their meteor attack has almost no telegraph, so you will get interrupted often. And when u do finally beat the event, u are rewarded poorly for ur efforts. Do it once for collection and never bother with it again.

The two legendary bosses are easy compared to the phase before them. I agree that the CC bars are way overtuned. And if Anet says the bars are working as intended, please make the rewards worth the brow-beating commanders and players have to do in order to get pugs to bring CC and DPS builds.

I did this successfully once after many failed attempts just to get the achievement done and don't plan on doing it again. In the time it takes to do this (with a high risk of failure), you can get more rewards doing just regular events., nevermind other metas.

@Mewcifer.5198 said:

@Unknown.3976 said:

@Endless Soul.5178 said:I haven't even participated in this event yet, and I've already heard very bad things about it, not just here, but from my guild mates as well.

I am

not

looking forward to this.

Invulnerability is a poor boss mechanic, it just pads the fight. And CC spam is always annoying to deal with, u won't see it coming becuz there's no telegraph and your screen will literally be filled with particle effects. The dual legendary battle is a poorly designed fight, period.

U ought to give it a try and not rely on 2nd hand info.

@Unknown.3976 said:

@Mewcifer.5198 said:

@Unknown.3976 said:

@Endless Soul.5178 said:I haven't even participated in this event yet, and I've already heard very bad things about it, not just here, but from my guild mates as well.

I am

not

looking forward to this.

The invulnerability is a phase where you have to killed the branded sparks that spawn before they get to him so he doesn't get powered up by them. It's not as if he just goes invulnerable for no reason.

PS. I was there. I did it with them.

They already said the metas or at least rewards are being monitored and looked at. It was either on here or the AMA. Changes take time to implement - im sure we will see improvements in the coming weeks, much in the same way Gerent was (although that was claimed to be a scaling error if memory serves)

@Boogiepop Void.6473 said:We haven't seen any reaction to it and those are fairly buried at this point so it dosen't hurt to bring it up again, especially since I came to the same conclusion independently.

Threads cease being 'buried' when someone posts in them again, no?

Perhaps, the Devs would find it easier to gather feedback from fewer threads about the issue(s).

I agree the rewards are an issue, I would suggest a bunch of trade chests spawning at the end (keeps contracts having value to the masses) and adding Amalgamated Gemstone.

Another issue is the whole event seems to destroy my FPS to the point I cannot go near it.

@Chickenooble.5014 said:Until PoF releases a meta that opens an underground city with 50 chests to loot, it'll always be inferior loot.

I would settle for a pile of casino coins :P

I wouldnt say ccing 4 bosses is on par with gerent but oh well. I do agree the rewards are shit, that the theme of pof so far. Nice events and prob lots of content, no real replayability.

I was looking for a Serpent's Ire group for the last few days and haven't seen one. Not saying they don't still happen but I won't be surprised if they become rarer and rarer. The event scaling seems broken atm and the rewards are very poor. I just want to do the stupid thing for the collection, but I suspect I've missed the boat.

Is like they forgot all the lessons they learned from HoT's rewards. Remember when they had to rework them several months after release?

Will we have to wait several months for them to make PoF rewarding too?

A daily reward chest from the metas with useful rewards. A chance of getting one of the named weapons required for the spec collections. Better actual rewards for the event itself.

I just tried to do the event myself. Holy hell, Anet!

So, my story starts out like many others. I need the collection, and I haven't seen a single person forming a group for this event. Not a one. I can see why, because it is in an obscure and extremely dangerous corner of the map. Also, the event isn't clear on exactly what is demanded of people, because there is no circled area to indicate what is going on. It is extremely user unfriendly, because the only way to know that you're supposed to aimlessly kill branded vets in the area and a zealot will randomly spawn somewhere with no indication is if you sat down and tried to do it yourself.

But, unlike others, I rose to the challenge. I have a commander tag, and with recent map completion on my mesmer I thought it was best to whip out the overpowered support chrono and finally get this thing done. After looking up the schedule for this event, I figured that 30 minutes before reset was the best time to do it, since people were actually around. I tagged up, set up a taxi, and started forming a group half an hour before the event starts. The first thing I noticed is that nobody still was forming a group. The second thing I noticed is that actually getting a group is REALLY SLOW. Nobody really knows this event, so nobody shows up for this event. It wasn't until the event nearly fully underway that people started to show up.

Of course, having never done this event before, the most I can gather together are the random anecdotes of other players who have also failed this event. I quickly surmised that I should mark the corners of the broken mirror, and have people split up into 5 even squads and go to the marked spots. Of course, because all of the squad tags are colorful circles and squares, I had to constantly repeat in squad chat over and over again which squad goes to which circle. Also, because all the people joining are random players seeing what all the hullabaloo is, they behaved predictably: like morons. Nobody would split from group 1, nobody paid attention if I manually moved them over, nobody respected group assignments, mostly they would just follow my tag around.

Whether they brought CC or not is up for debate, because in spite of them running around like deaf toddlers, we managed to complete the first part of the event. We headed to the broken mirror, "split up" in very poor manner, and then the real troubling part of this event begin. Breaking the bars of the branded forgotten zealots is ridiculously hard. Keep in mind that I'm on a support chrono, so I am hitting these guys with double gravity well with double tides of time, only to see their bar barely move. Their bars are so sturdy that I cannot possibly tell whether my teammates had CC or not, because their bar just doesn't move. Out of the 5 zealots, only one was killed, and it was mine. Nobody else, not even the bloated group 1, could kill their zealot.

Whether or not the boss after this group is too hard or not, I don't know. Nobody in my squad had ever managed to reach it. The Serpents' Ire meta is a repeat of the launch King of the Jungle Meta at HoT launch. We suffer from a menagerie of problems:

(1): The obscure location, nature, and lack of rewards for this event means nobody shows up for this event. You need a full map to complete it, but you'll never get one.

(2): There are too many things to simultaneously manage. To get proper, coherent organization to beat the event, you'll need 5 commanders. One for each corner. Problem is, unless you're on a super elite no-life guild dedicated to dealing with the event, you'll never get 5 commanders. Before the event even begins, I had trouble getting 5 people, period.

(3): You can't control who shows up for the event. And, predictably, over a third of the map has no idea what crowd control is. You can't design an event where the entire map needs to be dedicated to crowd control when a sizeable portion of the population has no idea what it is. In spite of yelling at people for years to bring berserker or viper gear for years now, most people on the overworld still don't bring it.

(4): The crowd control needed is ridiculous. Chronomancers have the best CC in the game, and yet I was barely able to scratch their bar. It is the muckstalker all over again.

(5): The rewards don't justify the effort. Aside from the collection, you get nothing special.

I don't see any way that I could complete this event under my own power. Even having a commander tag, there is nothing I can do. I just have to hope that some larger guild happens to organize the event, and that I manage to get in to this guild run.

Don't forget FPS dead zones where it will just grind most systems to a halt.

I tried this horsekitten event twice, and it was a complete disaster both times. Breaking those CC bars is impossible to the point that if not for Youtube videos, I'd never believe it was actually done. I threw my hands up and said fuck it, I'll pass on that particular piece of Funerary gear and just get Sinister stats for that slot.

Well Blood Red Arachnid... my bf and me tried to organize this event and complete it for 4 days... we had the same problems that you had :/ it just doesn't seem to be doable even with a full squad. We gave up for now. In my opion it's just not worth it to struggle with an event being that hard for just some stupid collection piece for an exotic armor (!).

I'm just annoyed that I did this event and now I have to do it again if I want the achievement.

@CedarDog.9723 said:I'm just annoyed that I did this event and now I have to do it again if I want the achievement.

When I saw they added this achie I was angry. Now I simply don't care. 5 Ap isn't worth replaying this event.

@Kheldorn.5123 said:

@CedarDog.9723 said:I'm just annoyed that I did this event and now I have to do it again if I want the achievement.

Yeah, it's bullsh*t that ANet didn't just give those of us who've done the event the achievement/AP...