Zephire.8049

Just finished a post-"fix" run and she was still changing sides too often. 8 or so times just in a single phase and her tail just as much. This being in a highly organized group that had plenty of DPS for everything but starting in the second phase, no one could stand still for more than 5-10 seconds because she was moving around so much. We also only got 2 CC phases in the whole fight and one of them directly chained into a phase change so was rather pointless. So if that "fix" did anything, it wasn't nearly enough and there still needs to be an internal cooldown on her changing sides and limiting the number of tails.

That's the thing, they do know. They specifically cited the low number of people who regularly raid as the reason why raids were being put on the backburner as it was unfair to dedicate the majority of PvE resources (time, money, devs) to content for the minority of players. Granted that was years ago but it's not like the raiding scene has exploded and taken over since then. They also (rightfully) got flak in HoT for having part of the main story take place in at least one raid and for forcing people to do the Forging Steel strike to advance the story in IBS, so by all accounts they know most PvE players are casual and know not to lock "casual" content behind raid/raid-like content or forced group content.

I was really hoping that today of all days, there would be a statement (and maybe hotfix) released ASAP but the disappointment at the continued silence from Anet is now worse than the disappointment at DE. "Over the weekend" implies that on Monday—Tuesday at the latest—there would, at minimum, be a statement about whether they're happy with the metrics or are working on changes. Given what's happening with the community, emergency PR mode should have been activated days ago as silence does nothing to help in this situation and is driving paying customers away. I thought Anet's communication was finally improving and they had learned how damaging silence from a developer is but evidently not.

It always surprises (not really, but is always disappointing) that as progressive as Anet is for some things, they still have yet to address multiple accessibility issues for disabled people. Adding colourblind options or changing what exists has been asked for since release and even if they don't want to go back and change previous effects, they could have (and should have) started changing them from the moment they said they were looking into a colourblind mode. Visual noise and flashing lights have also been something players have been talking about for years yet nothing has happened. Run things by actually disabled people (not advocates as a lot of advocates aren't disabled themselves unless they're part of a group for disabled people run by disabled people). Not all disabilities can be accounted for, especially as there's such a range even with specific disabilities, but that doesn't mean not to bother adding options at all. You don't throw up your hands and say there's no reason to try because there's "no silver bullet" that works for everyone. I'm so sorry you're dealing with that, OP. At this point it seems like a lot of design decisions are about cutting through the visual/audio noise which further adds to it, or devs deciding something was boring and to "spice it up" or they figure out how to make the engine do something new and overuse it (such as the spinning effect in LW4 where your character is pulled in circles) regardless how it will affect players.

20 hours = ~10 attempts. It's only 2 hours if you win on your first attempt. And yes, it does stop people from doing content as it is required for multiple achievements and the advertised mount. And once again you're assuming you know what others like and do so you can put everyone in a box (in this quote specifically, that people only play GW2 and nothing else and don't know other games exist) that fits the view you want to have. GW2 was billed as a casual MMO for 9 years, over 9 years if you include the pre-release hype and info so if anyone should seek out games that fit their challenge level, it's people who want challenging MMOs because this game as a whole was not made for them. Certain parts, yes, but open world has always been about being chill and friendly and every time Anet tries to change it, there's a spike in complaints and Anet either nerfs it or it becomes dead/near dead content as soon as people can get away from it because not all people who enjoy open world PvE—especially solo open world PvE—want to deal with raids, elitists, have to run meta builds, use external programs, etc.

People know how to play for fun. You may find challenges like this fun but you =/= everyone else and you're assuming people complaining about the meta only want the turtle. A turtle that was made to be one of the main selling points for the expansion with Anet stating that it will be on par with the beetle in terms of difficulty to get, I might add. Spending 20+ hours on something with zero success is not fun for everyone and there are other hobbies and video games that do challenge in a much better way for people who do want a challenge at something. And so what if people just want the turtle? They bought the game the same as everyone else in the meta and were severely mislead about access to said turtle. Them wanting the turtle doesn't magically negate other people enjoying the meta for other reasons. If you want challenging content, go do fractals, raids, CMs, or PvP. There are options for you to have fun in the game. People who want chill content largely just have open world content and were blindsided by a non-consensual raid that's required for open world achievements, a PvE mount, and canonically takes place before the final story mission and Anet intended people to complete this meta before finishing the story.

Absolutely. It's not just the meta itself but how Anet is responding (and not responding). I'm now forced to recommend against the game for people who were looking for a chill MMO to play because the company is now pushing hard content that sounds a lot like "Sense of Pride and Accomplishment" and I'm not going to let someone invest a hundred or more hours in a game and spend $40USD minimum on a game without letting them know what's up once they hit the new content. If they choose to do so anyway, that's their choice but I'm not going to sit silently by. And all it will take is for a gaming site to publish an article or a popular MMO critic putting something out detailing how Anet spent months advertising a mount and saying it will be accessible only for it to be locked behind a meta that destroyed the playerbase in less than a week and said they weren't concerned about that and people who were considering trying GW2 will decide they'd rather not deal with a company that did that. GW2 is an old game as far as MMOs go and running on a ~20 year old engine that's still largely DX 9 and is a small franchise—investors and/or NCSoft may see this as a good time to pull the plug on it as it's already on borrowed time and was being propped up by the "casual" players. Games and studios have been forced to close because of things like this. And, unlike some other big MMO developers, Anet isn't in a position where they can deal with months or years of bad PR as GW2 is their primary and largest source of revenue and, if that goes away, their only hope is NCSoft covering their expenses for months if not years rather than cutting their losses and shutting the studio down to focus on the mobile market that is much larger and much more profitable than an old MMO.

"What do you mean tossing people people into the deep end of an olympic swimming pool that's in use doesn't make them want to learn how to swim?!" I've raided in the past and intentionally chose to stop. Having this dropped on myself and others doesn't make me want to go back to raiding, it reinforces my decision to not raid. Raiding is fun when it's with people you know and who share the same attitude toward it, not when you're forced to PUG with people who range from not caring to yelling in map chat and demanding killproof. It even values your time worse than PUG raids as at least then you can do other things while keeping an eye on LFG when you have an interest—DE requires you to actively play a map for 2 hours before you have one (1) attempt before metaphorically throwing you back in LFG.

I'd say taking a weekend off right after a big launch also leaves a bad impression. Not that the devs don't deserve a break or a weekend, but going radio silent when there's game-breaking bugs and the community is drawing battle lines and attacking itself less than a week after an expansion launch lets things fester far more than they have to. Even having an assigned comms person interacting and taking feedback and saying they're going to pass X, Y, and Z along and that devs are already working on A, B, and C but the changes won't go out until after the weekend would have gone a long way. And unlike at-release living world episodes, an expansion means people paid $30USD-$80USD and less than a week in are already rethinking their purchase. Pay the overtime and hold off on taking a vacation until things have settled in and you know neither the game nor community will explode if you look away for two seconds.

Which is the crux of the issue. As Mukluk said, it's a non-consensual raid and both sides are getting angry about it and angry at other players because of it. Keep this kind of content in raids/fractals/strikes, don't force it on those who have no desire to play it and intentionally don't do such content. The open world is to have fun, not be told to "git gud" by other players and a company that build an MMO around casual, friendly play that's supposed to be intuitive and not require outside resources unless you're with friends or doing instanced hard content. It had the potential to be a fun, engaging meta but was ruined by artificial difficulty and the expectation that players will regularly dedicate 2 hours to something that fails far more than it succeeds.

Oh absolutely. There's zero warning the map's like Silverwastes or Drizzlewood in that the entire map is part of the meta and the game just kinda shoves you onto it. But unlike SW or DW, the map capacity limit is much lower so it harms everyone's experience when someone shows up for the story or to fish or to mine or to do achievements or simply to see what's up. There should be an assumption that a certain number of players on a map won't be participating and have capacity/tuning based on that rather than how it is now which sets up people to get yelled at if they dare do something as drastic as... walk through a portal that the story tells them to walk through.

Which is why you don't typically put content that requires constant communication for a chance to succeed in the open world. Not everyone reads English, not everyone has chat turned on (especially less than a week after an expansion where people disable map to avoid story spoilers), and people could have blocked each other thus not see messages. Chat is definitely handy but it shouldn't be essential in non-instanced content.

Sure, but it was run daily because of achievements, map completion, and map currency tied to it and you had to have a timer and fight to get into an active instance. Though even then groups would fall apart at the pods. You also can learn the mechanics perfectly but that doesn't matter when RNG can muck you over and/or because the other 49+ people are playing like, well, open world solo players rather than organized raiders. DS also allows 2x-3x the number of players on it in part because it's open world and it was known that newbies and players who haven't optimized their build will want to participate. DS was like a puzzle that needed figuring out and then it was about streamlining that. DE gives you puzzle pieces and it's up to the game to decide if you get the right ones to complete it. Yes there are things you can do to get the correct pieces but it's still up to the game to decide if they can go together. Which is fine for instanced content, not an open world meta event with a small map population cap and a 2 hour reset time between attempts.

I'd say the power creep over the past 6 years plus the addition of mounts really helped.

Yeah, it's been bugged for a couple days now. Or at least on all the maps I've been on as I've been swapping instances trying to find one that's not bugged since I'm on that step of the achievement, too, but have yet to find one.

Or at the very least have the timer pause when she's changing sides. And if that somehow throws off the event timer it just goes to show she's changing too often and there needs to be either a cooldown on it or she only changes sides X times per fight. And agreed. The meta and response to criticism by saying it's what they want gives me a lot of "Pride and Accomplishment" vibes and what happens when an extrovert decides an introvert "just needs to come out of their shell". Raids should stay raids and a lot of people are fine not raiding or doing raid-like content and don't need strangers telling them to do it because it will "make them feel good." As it is, Soo-Wan now elicits an anger in me and the reveal and her story has been ruined by this meta and how Anet has dug in their heels on it. Even if they change the difficulty eventually, they still pulled "git gud" and went silent over a weekend knowing full well people weren't just not having fun but it was creating strife and toxicity and people were getting refunds. And, of course, hyping up the siege turtle more than they usually hype anything (and putting out advanced merch) only to have it be locked behind a meta they know few people are able to complete.

Just watched it and it's definitely misleading and will lead to people who watch it getting frustrated because of the aforementioned lack of mentioning RNG. If it was just Attack 1 > Attack 2 > Attack 3, the success rate would be higher and people could actually learn and streamline, but as it is it's like knowing the answers for a test only sometimes you have 15 seconds to jot the answer down and other times 1. Oh and it's a joint score with everyone else taking the test so if not enough people pass, everyone fails. And you have 20 minutes for the whole test. It also takes more than 10 hours to get a win unless you're lucky or can join up with a squad of top players. I'm at about 40 hours now between the reset time and how you're required to stay on the map if you want to even try to get into a squad or keep your place on an organized map, and 10 hours would mean getting a win in 5-6 tries which just isn't happening unless someone has lottery luck.

"Must have KP or Turtle Mount"

Exactly. None of the mechanics are hard (possibly challenging and do require learning, but not technically hard), it's the randomness of it all and how no one thought to code cooldowns into the fight or have it so she doesn't have both the tail and breakbar up at the same time. At this point I've done about 20 runs—all failed—and only a handful didn't have her constantly switch sides and/or have the tail and breakbar up at the same time. Or have a break bar succeed only for her to swap sides thus rendering the exposed debuff pointless, especially when her tail goes up the moment people reach her head and have to run all the way back to the other side of the platform. Plus it's nigh impossible for solo players to get into organized maps due to the map capacity limit and how LFG doesn't mark listings that are in full instances. It's RNG to get into a map that's seriously attempting it, it's RNG that you'll be in a group attempting it with people who know what they're doing, and it's RNG if she'll stay in one place long enough for people to do more than a couple auto attacks before having to run to the opposite side of the platform (and maybe run all the way back because, yet again, RNG). RNG on top of RNG on top of RNG is not fun or engaging.

Who this content is for is a great question. It's not for raiders as it's impossible to organize due to the map system and limitations, and how they will have to play with non-raiders. It's not for people who play open world as it has far to high a skill floor and fosters elitism. It's not for people into collections as it's a 2+ hour wait and pure luck blocking progress. It's not for people who want an advertised mount that was a key selling point for the expansion. It's not for people new to the franchise. It's not for people who RP or prefer a non-ideal play style. It's not for people with older computers. It's not for people who are disabled. The only thing I can think of is it's for Anet's ego rather than the players what with the response to the outrage and complaints being they like where it's at and they don't want to change more than what they've already changed if they can help it because it's "supposed to be" an epic battle. But, unchanged, the only thing "epic" about it is how quickly they'll lose players and have to issue refunds right after they launched an expansion as many people would not have bought EOD at all if this meta is an example of the direction Anet wants to go or how it treats casual players.

You're also reliant on everyone on the map wanting to do the meta instead of achievements, fishing, or the story. If you end up on a map with people who don't want to do the meta, that instance is essentially doomed as people can't join due to map capacity and there's not enough breathing room to have people elsewhere on the map not helping out. And that's assuming people aren't intentionally AFKing on the map to take up a map slot. Your only chance is to get into a fresh instance and have everyone swap over before too many pugs join it. Other map metas take into account that a certain percentage of people on the map won't be contributing and are scaled around that. This one seems to be scaled around everyone on the map taking part (while in properly geared raid builds... on an open world map), which isn't realistic.

This is one of my complaints as well: The fight encourages selfish play. If people are downed, you don't want to res them because that means you do less DPS. If people are in bubbles, you ignore them the moment you're in range of the tail. People in whirlpools are on their own and the advice I've seen about this is to just let yourself die to get back to the fight faster. Groups discourage playing support unless you're a specific build of a specific class. On the split phase, use the special action jump to get off the platform to heal even though it takes you out of the fight and people are getting downed. Again, never pause to res someone who's downed (not dead) because that costs you precious DPS time. If you do pause to res someone anyway, depending on the phase, you're gonna die as well because you'll be hit by AOE and can't dodge or heal while you're reviving someone. Changing the wisp phase helps some but the "challenge" still comes from a combination of RNG mechanics, fighting to do the opposite of what the game has taught players for 9+ years, and in general getting frustrated when people don't realize there wasn't a pause between tail phases so are attacking her head since the last tail phase literally just ended. Also people in chat being a downer and chat afterward being full of frustrated players.

They also were never the selling point of an expansion. The griffon was a secret mount that was never mentioned until people discovered and unlocked them, and the skyscale was an unexpected mount from "free" content. People had griffons in less than a week and skyscales right at two weeks (due to the original timegating), and the skyscale even came with an item to use for if you didn't want to or couldn't complete jumping puzzles and was quickly hotfixed so the ball toss was more disability and latency friendly. And both had people more than willing to help out either killing mobs, telling you the location of an item, or teleporting you to the end of a jumping puzzle. The turtles have been hyped for months (a year?) now and they're one of the selling points of the entire expansion, and it's a given they're going to sell skins for them... except to get one you have to luck out and beat an open world encounter that's harder and longer than any challenge mode raid or fractal. I wouldn't be surprised if there would have been less backlash against this meta if the turtle was Griffon 2.0 with zero mention of it until players started getting it.

Yep. Extra damage sounds nice but your damage bonus is effectively zero when the boss invulns constantly and you have to run back and forth on the platform because she keeps moving. It's no wonder that groups are now requiring ranged condi DPS in raid gear/build/DPS as melee is rendered all but useless unless you luck out on RNG and she stays still long enough that you can do your rotation.

Usually I'd jump in with a dozen or more characters, but the jade bot and fishing not being functional unless you buy/craft/move multiple items to them makes it a lot more frustrating than it has to be. Have a default core once you unlock the jade bot. It doesn't let you use chips and doesn't give you bonus vitality but it does let you use jade tech. Similarly, have a bait box that's shared between all characters. Give it a slot or two to hold lures and 8 slots for bait and it would make things so much easier. Both still encourage players to get better items on their alt(s) but removes how punishing it is if you hop on an alt that isn't kitted out yet.