lain.3148

i kind of regret making this thread... ofc a lot of ppl are just using it to be toxic 😕 if anyone wants my opinion after thinking about it for a while: imo where a lot of the toxicity comes from is that gw2's combat system is actually quite difficult skill-wise. Getting good enough at a rotation to be able to do it while focusing on other things, being able to dodge enough aoes that you can wear full damage stats and not down constantly, etc. This is not something that many people enjoy putting in a lot of practice to be able to do or are even capable of doing no matter how much they practice. This huge gap is reflected in the stat that the top damage players often end up doing 10 times as much damage as most other players. Do you really think its healthy in a game like gw2 for there to be such a big gap? that, basically, in an open world meta, if there are 5 pro gamer players in a 50 player squad they will often end up doing more damage than the entire other 45 players? Right now the game is in a state where most meta events basically get carried by the dps of a few players. Ofc this will breed toxicity. The players who are doing the majority of damage may feel like the rest of the players are leeching and the players who arent doing that much damage may feel frustrated and like they're not helping. And when things go wrong, like the event failing, some people will verbalize these feelings and frustrations in chat, often directed at other players. A lot of the toxicity i've seen in game is about DPS. Even if toxic conversations/arguments end up going in weird tangents, they often seem to initially be about DPS. Obviously, there being such a huge gap between what DPS different players are capable of contributes to this toxicity a lot. IDK if i can see anet doing any major changes that could help fix this though. if anything their recent attempts at making the open world content harder has made it worse, since doing okay dps is starting to become more important even in the open world. But i also dont think its really fair or okay in a game thats supposed to be focused on catering to all types of players that there is such a huge floor to doing acceptable damage. TLDR: DE toxicity was mostly about DPS that i saw. if it was easier to do okay dps there would be less of that sort of toxicity. it being hard for most players to do okay dps is majorly contributing to that kind of toxicity. ("hard" is relative. pls do not reply just to say its not that hard to do okay dps. as shown by the 10x stat, it is hard enough that most players can not do it)

I think many of us have noticed the large increase in toxicity in game after the EoD expansion launch. A big example is many discussions around the dragon's end meta, but it's not limited to that at all. I've seen commanders of open world metas (not just DE) making fun of people for dying, telling people they shouldn't play the game or shouldn't get rewards if they down a lot, boasting about how much dps they are doing, etc. All of this in open world metas that are probably quite unlikely to fail no matter how 'badly' the squad performs and where many of the players are likely new to the map and maybe even new to the game. Since the EoD launch I've also seen people saying things and having discussions in map chat that are frankly very offensive and would probably make many people feel unwelcome in the game. That I've seen this kind of toxicity from commanders and veteran players and not just random newish players is inexcusable and I feel points to a major growing problem in the community. People talk about how great and welcoming the gw2 community is, and in many parts i agree with them. There are so many amazing commanders and guilds in game that help new and veteran players so much, and these kind of people and guilds definitely are in the vast majority. The toxic commanders and players I've seen don't seem like they're affiliated with a guild that participates much in the community, aren't doing guild meta runs, and don't really seem to participate in the larger gw2 community at all. But the fact remains that many new and returning players will end up joining their squads in lfg and seeing them talking in map chat, leading to a worse experience with the game and a bad impression of the community. This might sound a bit silly but I've noticed a lot of these players using certain terms, ie, asking for "big pumpers" in lfg and using 4chan slang in chat. This isn't something I saw at all in the game before EoD launched. One of the biggest reasons many people, including me, play this game is because of the wonderful community. Because of that I think its really important to try to address or at least pay attention to things happening within the game that could make the experience with the community worse for people. Personally I don't know where this kind of behavior is coming from or why it's happening more now or what can be done about it, but I think its important as a community to take note of it and to talk about it.

the issue with this is that if any player not aware of what the squad is doing - which is common in open world - stands in the circle and doesn't jade wp back up it will make the whole skip fail or take way longer.

I think, even if the green circle skip was removed it would keep failing bcs the wisp part is not obvious right away how to do it / it might be difficult for a lot of people who haven't done it before, and a lot of people are selected to do it, maybe like ~18? but if any of them mess up at all it will subtract from the timer and maybe fail the entire event if they take longer than 2 minutes, which is completely possible. heck it probably takes at least a minute or two for someone to read their skills and figure out what they're actually supposed to do. and if there is a troll they could just sit on the ground the entire time and make the event fail. so i don't really agree that trying to do the skip is the issue that's causing many groups to fail. if a map couldn't pull off the skip i don't think they could pull off doing it the right way either.

also the entire getting 50 people all doing the event into one map through lfg in order to keep ppl not doing the event/noobs out of the map instance feels like exploiting the instance system's player limit and in general this meta event i feel has really shown the weaknesses of gw2's lfg system (sorry for the salt in the last post, its just pretty frustrating. and great post OP)

Just ran it with a pre-organized 50 person squad with all meta builds and comp, ie, 10 subgroups each with meta supports. we were all there the entire three hours, so we all had the 20% buff, but it still failed because the single person not in the squad messed up the wisp part both times. literally 50 people's 3 hours of time wasted because of one mistake one player made.

most squads i've been in if we had even 2 extra minutes we probably could have got it. (also, its moving around the map so much for some ppl because their squads are failing the cc/a dps check im pretty sure) when it does the attack after the burn phase that targets half the area, its probably going to move to the other side after. if you know to start going to the other side once that huge yellow indicator shows up there isn't actually much time wasted by it.

the boss and mechanics dont need a nerf they just need to increase the time limit by 5-10 minutes and 90% of squads would be able to do it.

id be shocked if it was above 1%

its different when you have an option to just skip it, doing the 5 springer jumps when you could just fly up with skyscale would be masochism. but when its the only option its pretty good experience. it really makes you feel like you are overcoming something and reaching a hard to get to place.

having to use 5 springer jumps to get around a rock is part of the experience though, and they took that away 😞

if skyscale wasn't in the game they would have made kaineng a lot easier to navigate for ppl without it though. like my point is, there's players who have skyscale and players who don't. if they design the maps for players who don't they'll feel too small and easy to the players who have skyscale, but if they design maps for the players who have it they'll feel too big and hard to navigate for the players who don't have skyscale, so they have to design it in the middle which makes kind of a less good experience for both types of players. adding skyscale and putting themselves into this bind was their mistake.

I ran into a bug where I can't mount skyscale on one of my characters, and, frankly, i thought it would suck but getting all the HPs in the new maps without skyscale has actually been way more fun, and the maps just feel so much bigger and more alive without being able to fly quickly past everything with skyscale. It's making me realize that them adding skyscale probably made all their big open worlds suddenly feel small for the players that got it and probably was a mistake. after all they cant just increase the size of the maps to make them feel big and like things you could spend hours exploring again since that would make them too difficult for all the players who don't have skyscale.

im expecting to be able to play the game that i bought and not have to have to wait for a patch before one of its main advertised features becomes available to me to progress to get. i didnt rush the story, i watched every cutscene, dialog, etc, got to the last map, saw that completing the meta was needed for the "true ending" and to get the mount, so tried it and failed with a 50 ppl squad, and tried a few more times and failed each time and gave up on keeping playing the story/getting the mount for now. not very enjoyable.

end of dragons more like end of players enjoyment of the expansion once you get to this map. idk what made them think locking the final mastery track and the shiny new mount advertised on the front of the website for this expansion behind a meta with a 99% failure rate that takes two hours each try would make most players happy. esp when the rest of the expansion is mostly smooth sailing and fun till here then a sudden abrupt end to your progress. being told you have to wait weeks for players to either get gud or for anet to patch it for me to be able to keep progressing in the expansion just makes me feel like playing a different game honestly.

this meta making me feel like id way prefer spending some time playing ffxiv again to spending another 2 hrs on a failed meta,, gj anet great ending to ur expansion 😕

the story and maps are SO GOOD but everything else feels not ready at all

(jade bots are unusuable fully bcs the research notes thing is broken, turtle mount bcs the end meta you need for it is basically impossible to complete rn bcs its overtuned)

two of the features they advertised a lot as big things in this expansion - jade bots and the turtle mount - were unavailable on launch and still are afaik due to bugs/awful balancing. so obvious they were rushed and just hoped most players would be too busy with the story to notice.

firebrand is just too strong. it needs nerfs. no support should be able to give high quickness, might, stability, resistance, aegis, and also high healing fairly easily. no other support can come even close to competing with it.

i think if they improved the LFG tools the meta as it is now with maybe 3-5 minutes added to the timer might be fine though.

it feels like they made an (amazing) raid boss and put it into open world in front of players who dont have the tools to organize their squads in the same way they do raids and maybe arent geared for that high level of difficulty that raids have or just dont want that level of difficulty, they're playing open world instead of raid after all

having this issue as well, pretty frustrating