DO NOT nerf Dragon's End meta.

[Sylvi.8372]

On Raid level mechanics/telegraphs: what if most open world players can't see it due to lag/computer issues? Player skill level aside, it's a world of difference in reaction times when one has a good computer and internet.

Let's remember this is a game with active defenses where reaction time matters. For those with a bad computer: Even if a player was very skilled, what if they just don't see the telegraph? They're standing one moment and in the next they're downed. Especially when you put 30-50+ people in the same area. I attended a failed meta earlier, a simple attack from the boss easily downed 20-30 people.

I could see it all at max settings, because I invested in a good computer, but not everyone has that. And GW2 can't limit itself to only those with good gaming computers. Not everyone is like us who are used to clearing endgame content: knowing how to react to telegraphs, knowing how to use sustain and tp skills, and experienced with doing rotations.

______________________________________
PS:
—I speak as someone who used to play both the worst and better computers.
I've played on (1) a potato computer running at 3 to 15 FPS (ave. 5) and 300 ping. Even if you set graphics to lowest, this was the best it could do. At this level, even turning the camera while gliding is hell.

Now I have (2) a high end computer that can easily do 60 to 165 FPS at 240 ping on the highest graphics settings. If I didn't react to a raid boss' telegraph in time, it's legit my fault.

 

—I've done all game modes with both computers (1) and (2). (Including raids - CM raids only a few times, fractals, WvW, open world metas, etc.)

 

— What adds to the frustration is that it's a 2(?) hour wait to the next meta. It's not like raids or fractals where we can simply gg and try again asap. This not only frustrates casuals, but wastes the time of endgame tryhards as well.

—  This is a map meta like DS and Dragonfall. It's not like DragonStorm or Marionette when we can gate the instance with a private squad.

Edited March 2, 2022 by Chrysline.2317

[Beddo.1907]

One player can fail the whole meta thanks to crystals. That shouldn't be a thing.

We are at the point where ppl are kicked from the squad unless they are a must have class. Already seen 3 squads that insta kick unless you can "prove" you are useful (aka play the class com considers good).

[Zok.4956]

6 hours ago, quaniesan.8497 said:

oh here we go, some elitist bs.   We failed 8 times with quite well-coordinated groups and everyone tried their hardest.   If you want super challenging stuff, go raid.

 

I agree with your statements. Only a small note:

Most raiding is easy compared to the final fight in this map meta. Because in a raid you can just /gg and try again immediately with the same people you try to learn/do the fight. But in this map meta you can try again around 2 hours later with mostly different players if you find a map that is not abandond or full. In a raid you can control how skilled the players are you are playing with / team composition. You can not do this in an open world map meta.

 

 

[Slowpokeking.8720]

7 minutes ago, Zok.4956 said:

 

I agree with your statements. Only a small note:

Most raiding is easy compared to the final fight in this map meta. Because in a raid you can just /gg and try again immediately with the same people you try to learn/do the fight. But in this map meta you can try again around 2 hours later with mostly different players if you find a map that is not abandond or full. In a raid you can control how skilled the players are you are playing with / team composition. You can not do this in an open world map meta.

 

 

Exactly,  open world meta are not supposed to be hard because of this reason.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

Raid level mechanics aren't a good idea in a hundred-player open-world fight full of aural and visual noise on top of a small tower in the middle of the sky.

 

But I don't think it would need toned down much. maybe by 15% or so.

Edited March 2, 2022 by Hannelore.8153

[Zok.4956]

9 minutes ago, Beddo.1907 said:

One player can fail the whole meta thanks to crystals. That shouldn't be a thing.

 

a funny side note: We were trying the "no green" strategy (which usually does not work, because a few players are always standing in green) to skip the crystal phase and "gain" 4 minutes and we had a run where really no one was standing in green (the player that was designated to stand in green was so surprised that he jumped off the platform in the wrong direction) and ... boom. Was interesting. 🙂

[RoadRunner.9253]

We tried the meta 4 times now, a friend did it 6 times, and failed each time.
A meta being hard is only good if it's actually manageable.
If you keep it this hard, people will just walk away and not do it in the future, and it'll just become even less likely to be completed, and then no one will ever be able to do it.
I mean, really, think for a second.

Edited March 2, 2022 by RoadRunner.9253
Typo

[Hallow.7368]

This depends on what you consider "hard". Having a low winrate and challenging mechanics are two separate things entirely. The Dragons End meta is NOT mechanically challenging. It IS low winrate because it's easy for random players who don't read chat or don't understand the directions or don't want to be told what to do to kitten it up meanwhile they're only doing like 2k DPS as power virt with like only 3 of the traits unlocked and a staff equiped. All it takes is for them to stand in greens or fill up a magic crystal super early on the stage before the boss to screw everyone else up. This meta is literally just people trying to shepherd cats through a blizzard where they can actually kitten it up for everyone else by they themselves doing the mechanic wrong

Edited March 2, 2022 by Hallow.7368

[Rauderi.8706]

12 hours ago, Firebeard.1746 said:

Turns out, for some reason, hardcore players aren't turned on by hard content

S'truth. If they liked "hard", they wouldn't gatekeep raids so hard. Nah, they want ezpz clears for max rewards. 

 

Though, it's still pretty early to be nerfing things. Definitely needs to be monitored and adjusted. Scaling has always been a big problem with large events, and EoD metas are no different.

[DragonMoon.6098]

1 hour ago, Beddo.1907 said:

One player can fail the whole meta thanks to crystals. That shouldn't be a thing.

We are at the point where ppl are kicked from the squad unless they are a must have class. Already seen 3 squads that insta kick unless you can "prove" you are useful (aka play the class com considers good).

If that flavor of bullpoopy becomes the norm, that's when I leave the game and go back to ESO that I'm still paying for and not playing (due to spending more time here). 

OW meta is supposed to be for tags to give directions with the understanding that there are players mixed in the ranks that are first-timers or less-than-good, or are just plain idjuts. That's how meta works...and a map-wide event should be able to account for a few players making mistakes and not fail everybody as a result. That's like failing an entire class because one person screws up a question on the final exam.

And if we get to the point where people are getting chucked simply because of the class they are playing, well...no thanks. Next it will be people getting left out because they don't have the right gear equipped either. Oh, you don't have all ascended trinkets? Sorry, you can't play with us. NOPE. 

Edited March 2, 2022 by DragonMoon.6098

[Zephire.8049]

• PoF metas: Some said not to nerf them. They're now largely dead because Anet was slow to nerf them (and even slower to up the rewards).
• Marionette 2.0: Players said not to nerf it. It's now largely dead.
• TT: Not dead but players will tell other players to not bother if they aren't on an organized map 15+ minutes ahead of time.
• TD meta: Same as TT.
• DS meta: Same as TT and TD but also requires you to be willing to invest an hour or more and run in circles.
• Boneskinner: Anet's not happy players ignore mechanics and decided to delay EOD strike CMs in part because of it.

And so on.

MMOs did away with 40-person raids (and later did away with 25-person raids) for a reason. If people want to play a "git gud" game where they have to play perfectly to succeed, there's Souls and Souls-like games that will fulfill that need much better than an MMO. An MMO is not the place for something like that, especially when the player has to rely on others to succeed but has no control over who they're relying on and has to hope the people they're relying on both know what to do, are pulling top-tier DPS, and aren't more interested in seeing others fail than succeeding themselves.

Now multiply that by 100 or more where just one person can ruin it for everyone else.

That's not even getting into the time investment where the map locks at the start but to get full buffs and push each "lane" to max, you need to be on ut and actively playing for over an hour.

Or how the strategies closest to succeeding are ones that ignore mechanics.

Once the novelty wears off, the population will drop substantially because open world metas—especially ones that are the climax of an expansion—are not the place to have absurdly hard content, especially in an MMO that has a more casual playerbase and has been courting said playerbase for nearly a decade. They can be challenging but not nigh impossible as once enough players stop bothering, it's effectively dead unless a nerf to mechanics and/or buff to loot is large enough to entice players back.

The mechanics themselves are fine for this meta, imo, but the timer is an issue. Very few players are willing to go 2 hours between attempts and one of the reasons Anet has said for why they moved from raids to strikes is that strikes allow for more attempts in a shorter amount of time thus allowing them to make strikes harder than raid encounters. But this meta is harder even than that and does not allow you to try again immediately—if you fail, you need to start from scratch and hope the new group of people will be better and be interested in doing the meta as you cannot control that.

[Alcatraznc.3869]

Tried both Echo and uh, the last map meta event. Failed both.:

 

-On Echowild it was many people's first time (including me) but we got the boss down to 3% so I wouldnt say it is a critical failure. You really have to constantly pay attention to the ground and small white circle which isnt always easy due to all the grafic effect and how small the white circle is

 

-On the last map we wasted almost 20-30 min waiting for people and barely managed to completely push all lanes.. It didnt help that you need the turtle for that event and there's only one available. And if someone goes inside and afk, you're done.

 

But the common factor in both meta is that people are doing it for the first time. How are you supposed to know you have to hide behind a junk pile to survive the clap when you barely see anything and ends up focusing on trying to dodge the attack. I dont think the meta event are particulary hard, I mean Dragonstance exist and despite people saying "it's easy", I remember seeing group failed at the pod or during the fight against Mordremoth on the islands. Because they are not used to what is supposed to be done. Before EoD launch, I've seen a lot of player saying "the game is easy" "meta event are so easy" and so on but now that we have a meta event challenging player are asking for it to be nerfed. It is fine to fail the first attempts however if you're doing your I dont know, 50th attempts and you still dont know you have to hide behind something at X moment of the fight, the issue isnt the meta event being hard, it is you refusing to learn. Oh and before I forget, please when you die, dont just sit there and wait. You're not being helpful for you and the rest of the map. 

 

Give it a few weeks (thought I'm pretty sure some hardcore player already know and beat the meta event) and people will already handle the event with much ease.

[quaniesan.8497]

Mind-shattering challenges with near zero error margin can be fun but should never be in open-world events, where we will get a mixed bag of skilled and less skilled players and each with different level of resource (time, hardware, voice chat availability).  These variables are enough to ruin the result of this event as it is.  In raid setting, it's much easy to manage just less than  a dozen of people, and those who join raids probably will have time commitment and of reasonably skilled, and yet those can still fail left alone in public setting.  Frustration will feed the cycle of failure because of it gradually kills attendance.  And let's not forget the game-aging factor.  Let's face it, this game is about 10 years old and less and less people will play over time. It's a gradual dying process.  Can you expect to play this event, if left unchanged, at all in a few years when it rarely succeeds even now?

Edited March 2, 2022 by quaniesan.8497

[god fragment.5716]

So the dragons end contributor buff gives you about 10% stat increase and other buffs, while the event usualy fails at between 10 an 20% boss health. It would make sence therefore to asume that the event is intended to be done only by the people who have 10 stacks of dragons end contributor, which means by the people who did the pre-meta events and not by people who show up only for the meta. 

 

This makes sence from a developmental view as well since a lot of people taxi in just for the metas in other maps. I think this is a good move by the developers, because there are too many such people. A prime exemple would be the piniata, where most of us just stand around waiting for others to gather coins. Thats not how metas should work and i believe the developers adressed that in dragons end.

 

So basicly dont taxi people in for the meta.

[Beddo.1907]

49 minutes ago, Alcatraznc.3869 said:

-On the last map we wasted almost 20-30 min waiting for people and barely managed to completely push all lanes.. It didnt help that you need the turtle for that event and there's only one available. And if someone goes inside and afk, you're done.

You can use charges from the station to break it.

[Beddo.1907]

39 minutes ago, civokenes.3284 said:

So the dragons end contributor buff gives you about 10% stat increase and other buffs, while the event usualy fails at between 10 an 20% boss health. It would make sence therefore to asume that the event is intended to be done only by the people who have 10 stacks of dragons end contributor, which means by the people who did the pre-meta events and not by people who show up only for the meta. 

 

This makes sence from a developmental view as well since a lot of people taxi in just for the metas in other maps. I think this is a good move by the developers, because there are too many such people. A prime exemple would be the piniata, where most of us just stand around waiting for others to gather coins. Thats not how metas should work and i believe the developers adressed that in dragons end.

 

So basicly dont taxi people in for the meta.

Yeah no. The buff lasts 2h and stays between maps so pretty much everyone has it on 10.

Also if the meta was impossible because some ppl didn't get on map early enough to get all 10 stack then it's awful design.

[Predator.2847]

A nerf is required, I mean come on, it's so stupid and counter intuitive to have to ignore what seems to be a mechanism of the fight to do and actually everyone prefer to die to gain time than do what we are supposed to do (I mean the Green mark on the floor)

 

The difficulty is nice but the time is too short, so for me I would say mostly in terms of time, give us five or ten more minute and make not respect the green crystal part loose the meta or give huge debuff that make impossible to kill.

[Jeb CC.1342]

Failed the meta again. First part is fine, you don't even need extra turtles for that. 
But the 20 minutes for dragon slaying is, ooof. Never seen anyone complete the green circle part under 2 minutes. Want to do the one person on the green circle trick? Good luck coordinating that with random players, of which some just mute map chat entirely. One player not completing wisp stage shouldn't be able to throw the entire meta for everyone else. 
Meta isn't rewarding, and hardly anyone actually succeeds, so I'm just not going to try. 

[artcreator.4859]

Don’t nerf ,   It’s not that hard people just have to learn the mechanics. Give it 2 weeks and it will probably be passing a lot more.

 

learn mechanics, don’t stand in stupid places, have a build that makes some sense, it doesn’t have to be the meta build of course, but it should make some sense.

 

basically what I’m saying is, play the game.

[BlackShadowSword.3186]

Im Sorry but I failed today the Meta with a 50 people Squad who are all Raider and did his Dps rotation on the boss and it still failed at 3%... It's not good and balanced content when the the boss drops 2 or 3 mechanics in the same time. Also its imposble to do the meta at the moment with casual players and not all of the casual players have the time to do this event 100 times to make just one kill. They should fix the multi mechanics and a little bit of the Hp of the Dragon.

[Caitybee.3614]

Just got done trying to do this meta with 2 fully organized squads and about 57 people total for the end fight. We skipped the wisp phase as well and were still unsuccessful with 20% of the boss remaining. It's very frustrating dedicating 2 hours of work for a fail. It's only my 2nd time attempting the meta, but I won't be trying again unless it gets nerfed or re-tuned. It's way too difficult, and the very minimal who did manage to beat the event either got really lucky, or something just went right for them and we don't know yet.

[mythical.6315]

It looks like the only way to do it is to have only ONE person stand in a green circle for each crystal phase.  That person will then use their jade WP and WP back to the platform to immediately complete the phase.  The more people doing the greens, the more likely you'll get someone that doesn't know what they're doing and screws over everyone else forcing the full two minute phase.

[Notaheal.9841]

As like a fractal, maybe but this difficulty isn't there by design. It's a lot to ask for when it's overworld content that needs to be done to obtain one of the main selling points of the DLC.

[LucianDK.8615]

Yes, its too hard for pugs, with a tiny margen of error before its a wasted run.  When I eventually succeed it, im never going back until they nerf it.

[Mike.7983]

Fail #12, keeps piling on the salt, 1 person ruined run by having 2 on green zones. RIP meta i quit until this is toned down.  Waste of effort for turtle. Average player doesn't have skill to handle this at its current form, add 5min to clock or slash hp by 30%

 

Edited March 3, 2022 by Mike.7983