Blaeys.3102

Am curious about the future of elite specializations. New ways to play my class is one of the biggest selling points for any new expansion to me.

It wasnt the fight itself that was bad, as you point out in your response - it was the lag and crashes resulting from ArenaNet still trying to get map populations right. Would love to see that fight - at the same grand scale - without the lag, which should be possible now.

So, unless Im forgetting something, the only major world boss from season 1 (or pre season 1) missing is the Ancient Karka, the first real "Living World" major encounter they added. Seems like it would be a good candidate - with a little fight polish and balance - for the Winterstorm/Marionette/Battle for Lion's Arch treatment. Would personally love to see it.

With the ever growing number of guild decorations, it is getting harder and harder to figure out which ones are new. All they need to do is start listing them in the patch notes. Even just giving the names would really help those of us who enjoy that part of the game.

If it aint broke, dont fix it. Many of us still manage to enjoy them, even after 10 years.

The whole system is going away when Alliances are implemented anyway. No real reason they should dedicate resources to this now, imo.

Elegant solution imo.

I would be very interested in the completion percentages for this fight. It's rare to even see it in LFG even during primetime any more. And it is easy to see why - a 1.5 to 2 hour time commitment with a high chance of failure due to factors out of the player's control. Im all for complex fights in open world, but they need to be at realistic intervals/length and they cannot rely on dps races/timers to create an artificial sense of difficulty.

Ivan.

I didn’t anticipate the range of reactions and criticisms this would generate, but definitely understand a lot of the points many are raising. let me revise my premise to simply state that the map joining interface could use some attention and improvements. With how many metas work, you have a lot of players trying to either join friends or an organized commander on a soft capped map on a very regular basis. The mechanic for doing so currently feels very rudimentary and can lead to frustration. Maybe a queue system isn’t the answer, but I would like to see them explore better ways of doing this. hope that is a clearer description of my intent with the original message 🙂

In wvw, if a map is full, you go into queue with an idea of how many are ahead of you. It is time to apply that same system to full pve maps.

Thanks for acknowledgement And in the short term, thanks for giving me a way to pull my own little April's Fools prank on my ingame friends who dont read the forums 🙂

Exciting news!

I think the fight is a much better place, but there is one more change I would like to see and that is related to the biggest issue the fight has had since the start - RNG. This time, the issue is with the random timing of the side swap or the tail. If you get unlucky and she swaps or activates the tail just after a break phase, you lose the benefits of that break. That RNG means there are still some instances of the fight that are MUCH harder than others, solely because of the RNG related to those two elements. Again, that is bad design and keeps the fight from being the "staple" they want it to be. Two hours of prep time just to lose because of RNG you cant control is depressing and disheartening. Again, though, the fight is in a much better place than it was before.

The EOD Strikes need to use the same system the IBS strikes do, prompting you to join a public or private group when you go in - at least for the non CM versions of the fights.

I want placeable ziplines.

If they do that, what would motivate people to attempt the 2 hour slog + RNG mess + overtuned dps race that is Dragon's End.

There are better places to access crafting stations/forge/etc, so that part is meh for me. I like Arborstone because it offers easy access to three of the four EOD maps and has some fun distractions of its own. I spent about an hour in the Canach Club last night having a blast.

Because, while there is some challenge to the fight, that isnt why people are struggling. First, the dps requirements are too high for a open world event. And, for the record, dps requirements have nothing to do with difficulty - only about your ability to copy paste a build from a website and grind out a gear set. Difficulty comes from mechanics, which, when you boil it down on Soo Wan, are pretty simple. Second, there is still way too much RNG in the fight. That is obvious to anyone that has done this fight more than 3-4 times (and I have failed it 23 times at this point). All of that said, a simple bronze/silver/gold reward model (that we already see in many strike missions) would address 95% of the issue - negating the dps requirements somewhat while still rewarding those groups that min/max.

A bronze/silver/gold reward structure fixes this without detracting from the difficulty while still allowing a way to give groups not dedicated to metas/boon stacking/ pure luck with RNG a way to finish the fight. We already see this with the last generation of strike missions, so at least one developer at ArenaNet understands this concept.

Only if that title is "I got lucky"

First, there is a meta designed around having the turtle in Echovald, so - from a pure gameplay perspective - there is a reason to have it. Second, and most important, it doesnt matter why players want it. You might as well ask why do we want the raptor or gliding. It is a new way to experience parts of the game, so it's exclusion would mean not getting to have that experience (when that experience was advertised on every promotion for EOD for the past year). It doesn't matter if that part of the game is mandatory (no part of the game is mandatory) or not.

Anet has said repeatedly that they want fights to be about mechanic not dps. Of course, they then go against that philosophy with the DE meta, but still. Something like this, while a worthwhile endeavor and should happen, doesn’t address the real issue, which is poor fight implementation in game by the devs.

Pretty sure this is a result of the dev team being different one from game launch. They seem to care a lot less about building a community than they do about making a fight seem hard. You can still have an inclusive fight that offers a challenge and encourages the community to work together - just use the bronze silver gold reward model. Right now the last fight, because it is so dps/build dependent, has become a toxic cesspool of people blaming each other and venting their hate at the community. I hate that Arenanet seems to be okay with that.