Drizzlewood meta takes waayyyy too long now (meta event spoilers)

[BlackBullWings.2734]

Don't get me wrong, the new map is awesome and I love that one meta leads to the next. But this takes way too much time. it's actually insane. It took us around 2h 30min to clear, and in the end we get 10 minutes to desperately gather tiny chests with tiny loot around the entire second part.there are easy ways to solve this though:

• make troop evaluations take less time
• make troop morale checks take less time (kind of goes hand in hand with troop evaluations)
• in canopy crag we have to fight portals and then cannons, these are 3 separate events, why not make them 1 event with a bit of a timer until the next portals/cannon wave spawns
• instead of having us fight the tribunes in sentinel bay, archstone coast & frostvein watch one by one, why not just let us do all 3 at a time and make players split push? the first meta has us split push to the left or right anyway, so why can't that be applied here? (this is appareantly already the case, ppl either don't know or are doing all 3 for the loot/ap)
• what i think is the biggest offender, why have the dominion chest far between the 2 metas, it's 15 whole minutes of waiting time. why not have this happen at the end of both metas instead so we can get to the next meta event faster?
• can we also just get a very big chest at the end instead of 20 chests scattered around the map, it's less frustrating, and would also tie in well with the previous point.

overal, once you get to the ice part, the meta events get beyond amazing. but it just takes so much time, and it's so much effort. a lot of people i've talked to have said they're not doing it again, as the rewards aren't worth it for them. It's a shame IMHO, this map is really up there with its content, and it could be top tier, if not almost on par with HoT metas, if it didn't drag on for so long

dunno, just my 2 cents. What do you guys think?

[Cyndercat.7615]

Agree it takes way way too long but I think they already made troop moral increase faster this patch.

Definitely want your last 2 points to happen. Downtime in the middle of the meta is just bad design and should be moved to the end, with the northern chests being condensed.

[Khisanth.2948]

forget again, not even sure I want to do it once just looking at the map ... maybe if I just happen to be on the map and it happens to be at the right state

[SlitheSlivier.1908]

Everyone in my guild was also complaining it was much too long. I think anet is going to catch a bit of flak for it. At least they tried something new.

[Jilora.9524]

first try was 2h10m for me. i mean its rough because you can't sneak into maps on 2nd half now cause so busy so u must commit to 1 map for over 2h

[LucianDK.8615]

@Jilora.9524 said:first try was 2h10m for me. i mean its rough because you can't sneak into maps on 2nd half now cause so busy so u must commit to 1 map for over 2h

Things should slow down once the rush is over. Its always busy on episode release.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

My big suggestions are to move the chest farm to the end of the whole meta, instead of inbetween. Then merge Wolf's Crossing and Dominion's Breach, this way once you complete the first meta, the second immediately kicks into high gear.

[Infusion.7149]

Wasn't able to get all chests (missed a few) at end of the whole meta because I died trying to get the shards in the ice lake and lost some time ...Anyway I think the first half (prep/bridge push) should simply independent of the second half (dominion map push + frost citadel push). Thunderhead peaks is that way.

If you do have over two hours of time to spend it is minorly lucrative due to the price of jormag shards (Shard of Crystallized Blood of Jormag) hovering anywhere from 30 to 70 silvers. It's easily over 50 of them with quite a few unid (I was sitting at 120 green unid by the end).

I can't see that many people doing it on weekdays.

[Katreyn.4218]

I really enjoy both metas. But I will say that combined it is definitely a long haul, for this game.

I had the unfortunate luxury to just getting around halfway through the first meta on a map when the "new patch" message hit tonight. Everyone decided to stay, but it was a close call at the end with like less than 2 mins to spare before the server boot. A lot of panic death at Claw.

My first time with the new meta I got in a map just ending the first meta somehow. And it was nice getting to see the new meta straight off. I do think the boss farm in the middle (whats up with some chests not even spawning now anyways?) really throws things off a bit.

It will not doubt get a bit faster as time goes on. People know what they need where (EMP, etc), splitting for events, and stuff. But longterm still a pretty draining experience. Even the first meta "farming" it was a chore. Since you barely had 2-3 minutes to rest before the map resets after clearing bosses.

[Dondarrion.2748]

I kind of like that you actually have to commit to play through the entire meta and stick with a map for 2+ hours. Not everything needs to be content that is over before you know it and then rinse and repeat; if it needs adjustment, I'd rather they do very, very light touches as opposed to really drastic reductions of duration.

However, I wouldn't mind if they extended the timer to get the chests in the end so you can actually take a little time to breathe and collect your rewards. There's a lot of cool locations and spots in the northern part of the map but right now I hardly have time to check it out because you got to speed across the map to look for chests and shards, etc.

The two metas already has you rushing all these strategic positions, establishing new forward positions over and over and you don't really get to see much of the map, because there's always events demanding your attention. Feels like a proper conflict, I'll grant them that, but extending the reward timer by another 5-10 minutes would be nice so you can have a little time to get your bearings - deservedly - in the end.

[crepuscular.9047]

looks like someone forgot the lesson from Dragon Stand? I'm all for extended map meta, but I think any map meta (chained) needs to be capped at no longer than an hour

... what happened to 'You have been playing for x hours, please take a break.' we had back in GW1?

Health and Safety (Display Screen Equipment) Regulations 1992 suggests you should be having a 5-10 minutes break every 50-60 minutes... seems like all concerns for the health of players was thrown out the window with GW2

hope everyone has bought health insurance to get prescription glasses and cataract treatments

[Atomos.7593]

2 hours for a meta event is too long in my opinion. 1 hour is enough for me. I don't know if I will always be able to commit 2 hours to a map or if there will be enough players that stick around for that long to complete the meta.

[Donari.5237]

I think I lucked out tonight. I found a squad in LFG that was on the first meta, joined them, moved to their map without issue, found them on the final fight, had some time to chill out before north meta began, flailed my way blindly through without knowing what I was doing, got taken by surprise by the map closure, shrugged, worked on inventory management, then realized I'd been put in a map that was doing north meta at that very moment. I sprang into action, headed for things I'd missed first run through, and got through north meta again in short order with a much better idea of what I was supposed to be attacking and when.

I may never get back to back north metas again, but it was definitely a good experience tonight.

[Siobhan.6027]

2 hours is too long for a meta event. I can't believe they decided to add something so time consuming after people complained about the length of Dragon's Stand.

[sunshinefuu.6914]

Issue resolved.

Edited July 20, 2022 by sunshinefuu.6914
Old issue, not relevant.

[Galmac.4680]

+1

Just separate the map in two independent parts with two independent metas. 2 hours or more is way too much...

[Atomos.7593]

Another way to speed things up that will also make capture events more active during low populations in the map might be to reduce the amount of kills required to spawn the bosses at the capture points. These kills are mindless and very repetitive, and seem to be added only to waste time to reduce the amount of time left in order to capture the base. Obviously a large zerg will always stomp through these kills and the bosses so the kills requirement to spawn the boss just serves as another boring filler.

[crepuscular.9047]

@sunshinefuu.6914 said:It's extremely dangerous for me to sit too long because of blood clots, and I feel like intentionally excluding a large population of your community for the sake of content is incredibly insulting, not to mention putting their well-being at risk. No one should have to get up and take a break during a meta meant to be played through.

time for me to buy life insurance, there goes extra living expenses...

forget about buying my own home, saving up for a Miata is gonna get more difficult :cry:

[Chyper.1290]

How to resolve/reduce the time issue:

• move the champs at the end and condense all the small cheats scattered around, as someone already proposed

• give the chest that appears after killing a tribune as global reward to the whole map, so people can actually spread a kill all the Tribunes together

This should be enough ?

[Pepperball.5479]

Haven't done the new meta yet, as I didn't have the time to do the whole thing, and I couldn't find a map that cleared the first.....

[Critical Lag.9075]

I've done map once and I will not be doing it again unless it's shortened because it's just way too long. 2-3hours for single meta is just way too long, seems like ANet forgot all the feedback from Dragon's Stand. Now imagine you DC near the end and all this time is wasted.

Most of the days I have 1-2h to play GW2 and I will rather do my daily fractal run with some dungeons/raids. Also not to mention that main eye candy from the trailer, the infusion, is korean MMO levels grind, affordable by only TP barons, costing around 10k gold with current prices.

[Incar.7358]

Time for me to sound like a whiny baby.

Honestly haven't even tried the extension of the meta yet. I've thought about it and even planned to join a group working towards it, but it takes too long to get through the first half to begin to bother with the second, and so many maps are one extreme of full or empty.I don't have time. I only get a few hours to myself each day, and running the first half of Drizzlewood again to get to the second is not how I'd like to spend it. That goes for grinding out some of the masteries there too.

I liked Drizzlewood at first, but as soon as the novelty wore off and I started working on the masteries and achievements I came to the conclusion that the WvW playstyle and the (near enough) reward tracks style achievements shouldn't be in the regular PvE environment.I can see why they used the WvW method for it - they and us are familiar with it - but I don't think it was the creative solution they should have used.

I also don't like grind if the the grind is obvious - this is a big one for me. Previously, they executed grind hiding pretty well (that's just my opinion of course), but Drizzlewood smacks you in the face with it with only a little charm to soften the blow, and that's mostly how pretty the first half looks.

I'll eventually get all the new masteries no doubt, I like having them, but right now Drizzlewood is one of my least favourite maps.I've played on and off since release, and it may be that this is one of those releases which pushes me back into hibernation for another year or so, at least until there's enough new content and fixes to want to play again.

[Solanum.6983]

Agreed, It takes way too long in my opinion, anything to help cut it down would be appreciated.

On the Rewards - I don't get why they decided on having the rewards spread out, It's not fair to newer players.I feel so bad for the people without mounts or even skyscale/griffon I watch them and they just can't keep up with commanders fighting the bosses around the map for the first half of rewards and then for the second half they're on their own trying to get as much as possible but no doubt missing out on plenty. The Chests need to just spawn after the Meta has ended on the platform you fight the Claw of Jormag, It's big enough - there's no reason to have people scramble about to get their rewards.

[Cronospere.8143]

It's long, I don't mind that. Because it is well designed. But the loot is an issue for me. 2,5 hours of time but the loot doesnt reflect this.

[coso.9173]

if you ask me, they should have both halves independent of eachother. although they probably wanted to avoid doing bjora's situation again where no one does the blizzard part anymore...