Upcoming Changes to "The Battle For The Jade Sea"

[Rubi Bayer.8493]

The Jade Sea meta was designed to be the ultimate open world finale, an epic conclusion to the 10-year Elder Dragon story arc. To accomplish this, we challenged our own conventions for creating open world content to provide an encounter unlike anything ever seen before in Guild Wars 2. As such, the encounter was designed from the start to be challenging, but progressively more doable as players learn mechanics and how to handle phase transitions.

We're monitoring completion rates very closely and are currently happy to see that successful clears are becoming more common as strategies evolve and players learn and master the encounter. Right now, we are not making any adjustments to the overall health of the boss. Instead, we are looking at ways to incentivize players to engage with and complete the encounters’ core mechanics. Here are a few examples of changes you can expect to see with the next game update:

• Fixed an issue wherein the “green circle” phase could be completed under incorrect circumstances. After the update, players must coordinate to ensure all green circles are taken, and each player makes it back to the platform. Once every player has returned, the phase will complete.
• To accompany this change, the time to complete this phase has been reduced from 120 seconds to 75 seconds. This buys players 90 more seconds to fight the boss in a worst-case scenario where all the intended amount of “green circle” players do not make it back to the top of the boss arena.
• The duration of the outgoing damage buff provided to “green circle” players who successfully make it back to the top of the boss arena has been increased. This should allow it to remain active against the final boss even when players reach the top of the platform very quickly.
• The duration of the "Exposed" debuff from break bars in this encounter has been increased from 10 seconds to 30 seconds. This further incentivizes engaging with the break bar and should increase group damage output when completing the mechanic correctly. This change applies to both the Final Boss and all mini-bosses in the final encounter.
• The final boss should now more responsively transition from "stunned" or "vulnerable" states when pushed to any health threshold, greatly reducing the amount of time players spend waiting for a phase transition to begin.

We recognize that your feedback touches on both the difficulty of the encounter itself and acquisition of the Siege Turtle collection. For now, we’re targeting changes to improve successful completion rates of the encounter. If these changes don’t have the effect we’re looking for, we'll look at further changes to the encounter or potentially offer alternative acquisition paths for the Siege Turtle collection. We’ll be monitoring the impact of these changes over the weekend.

[Lucinellia.9247]

These sound like very nice changes? Any timeframe for their implementation?

As is, it is quite frustrating to properly prepare for the meta, coordinate correctly and then fail due to things like break bars not correctly appearing and there being too much movement across the platform as a result. I imagine most people will wait for these (excellent and well thought out) changes to be implemented as, with the encounter in its current state, it feels a little dispiriting.

[artcreator.4859]

I hope this doesn't make it too easy, but the green circle changes are very nice and needed. It's a very fun mechanic, everyone getting to do it is cool.

[Zzik.5873]

Im happy with the change yourre targeting to do. Dont nerf it, instead push player to do the mechanic wich it seem thats the way you want to move!

[Beddo.1907]

So mostly just changes to "rewards" for actually doing mechanics right and less time wasted on waiting for the boss.

Seems like the best solution to make the fight easier without allowing to just skip mechanics.

[interNerd.4908]

These changes are very welcome.

 

But I don't get how decisions are made within ArenaNet. The addon clearly targets new (unexperienced) players, because even though you can enter the addon only at level 80, you have to play a tutorial. So. Target group: New unexperienced players (aka. liquidity in business terms).

 

But yet, your very first sentence is "The Jade Sea meta was designed to be the ultimate open world finale, an epic conclusion to the 10-year Elder Dragon story arc.". This targets players that play Guild Wars 2 from day one. In my opinion, you have to decide which kind of player is targeted to complete the meta event. At the moment, the meta event is only doable with mainly the three meta classes. Any new player will not even know about these meta classes, but is expected to take part in a coordinated event with 49 other randoms. Seems kinda odd to me.

 

[kharny.3284]

good changes, but I would still say this version of the event should have been a strike mission, with a less punishing one(less mechanics and additional mobs) in the normal meta.

[tekhiun.8653]

I am glad  that you are working but please take it to heartfor the next content drop,  that long boring collections and  impossibly hard content take out the satisfaction of acquiring something that is so essential to an update, it would be all fine if it were a secret mount, but it a widely announced and hyped mount  and that even locks ppl out of completing the masteries , getting it after trying for a total of  24h  (12 tries) wont definetly make me like the mount or feel an accomplishment I will just be glad that I will never had to do that meta ever again

Edited March 4, 2022 by tekhiun.8653

[KurokouNekoki.7891]

We will give you further feedback as if it helps, impede more, or unchanges things as we try these new changes!
Thank you for the communication!

[DaKine.2694]

The success rate is increasing because players are forming organized squads and gatekeeping non-meta builds. After around 8 or 9 attempts, I finally joined one of these squads and saw countless people get kicked because they weren’t quickness or alac builds. They even kicked everyone that was playing a new elite spec. Even with hours of prep work and squad organization, we only beat it with 30 seconds left. Now, the successful squads that I’ve seen are either squads that only take the role they need, or squads that require a decent kp to join.

If your goal was to gatekeep most of your average player base from completing this meta and getting the turtle mount, mission accomplished.

Edited March 4, 2022 by DaKine.2694

[Khubbo.9067]

the cc bar on whirlwind players is way too high

[Lonk.4193]

Game has been out for a decade at this point. Have you ever considered maybe you're putting too much pressure on casual players to simply "get good enough" to complete metas that mount unlocks have been locked behind? Maybe after years and years of evidence that not everyone can handle such hardcore events that maybe you need to tone it down, accounting for both returning players who long since quit or new players?

Not all of us want to be forced into Raid content or equally difficult stuff while being punished for our time while waiting around for every-2-hour metas that basic starting unlocks are tied to.

[Liotrah.6459]

Great changes! The only change I wish was here too is to make it easier to target the tail. That thing swings around like crazy and is an important mechanic that players have to dps quickly.

[Volphy.5971]

I feel that any *one* of these changes would have been enough to make it easier for folks that wanted it to be easier, but also keeping it hard enough to be engaging for those of us that wanted it to be hard. I would have preferred only the wisp skip be fixed and have that be enough.

I'm worried that this meta is going to be a faceroll like most other meta events now, people were already getting a lot better with time at this event, paying attention to the pre-event buffs and such. Hopefully you are open to making this harder if it does become too easy, because the difficulty of this made it one of the best events in the game. I joined a guild and gained new friends in the game because of it. That is the *first* time that has ever happened in this game.

[CasualElitist.8795]

2 minutes ago, DaKine.2694 said:

The success rate is increasing because players are forming organized squads and gatekeeping non-meta builds. After around 8 or 9 attempts, I finally joined one of these squads and saw countless people get kicked because they weren’t quickness or alac builds. They even kicked everyone that was playing a new elite spec. Even with hours of prep work and squad organization, we only beat it with 30 seconds left. Now, the successful squads that I’ve seen are either squads that only take the role they need, or squads that require a decent kp to join.

If your goal was to gatekeep most of your average player base from completing this meta and getting the turtle mount, mission accomplished.

They can kick you from squad but you can still remain on the same map, so it shouldn't make any difference to you, no?
 

Not every successfull squad is gatekeeping people or asking for LI/KP or specific roles. I've done this meta 3 times with some friends and all runs were successful. We were around 20-25 people organized on voice chat with explanations and 3 commanders - the rest were random people from lfg, we gave them explanations in chat.

I'm happy to see those changes tho.

[Vlad Morbius.1759]

The fact that a major feature is tied to rng is total kitten. period.

[Infusion.7149]

Thanks for the updates

[Zeike.7469]

I think my biggest frustration following 15 attempts and all of which failures, is mechanics which were designed to be followed, are skipped in order to make the timer. You have some of those with the turtle who will purposly stand in green causing others to fail, and this is a 2 hour commitment per attempt, bearing in mind.  I don't expect it to be easy but I've genuinly put my all into it and come out short as opposed to others who got in by luck into a better group. 

 

Disheartening and I know of a handful of people who have left because of it.

 

I think gating the turtle behind it isn't the best idea, but the boss fight itself, I love. The mechanics are simple to work around, just need the right people.

 

Pretty sure its better on a raid setting than open world, many dont care to upgrade themselves for that kind of content so it's a mix and match of who you'll get. People who are giving it their all, CC'ing, hittting the tail, as opposed to those pushing 11111 are the ones who miss out sadly. 

[Nebilim.5127]

Anet is trying to ask a granny to climb  20 story building after having taught her to use the elevator in the past 10y, now she has degenerative bone and muscle issues. This isn't going to work, it is too late

Edited March 9, 2022 by Nebilim.5127

[Jokuc.3478]

I actually enjoy the difficulty of the meta as it is, and since I know many people do not enjoy its difficulty, I can appreciate these changes. They seem to make it less punishing while not nerfing the encounter to the point where it becomes boring.

I believe that what a lot of people are missing is the fact that this meta will succeed WAY more often after a few weeks when people learn the mechanics, so if you nerf it too hard early on there's a chance that the event will be too east and have no challenge to it once people actually git gud.

[Shadowmoon.7986]

1 minute ago, Vlad Morbius.1759 said:

The fact that a major feature is tied to rng is total kitten. period.

You keep using that word, but i do not think you know what it means. Rng has nothing to do with it. If you want a completion join a guild dedicated to it like people did when TT and Teq first came out.

[Vexona.6452]

51 minutes ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

The Jade Sea meta was designed to be the ultimate open world finale, an epic conclusion to the 10-year Elder Dragon story arc. To accomplish this, we challenged our own conventions for creating open world content to provide an encounter unlike anything ever seen before in Guild Wars 2. As such, the encounter was designed from the start to be challenging, but progressively more doable as players learn mechanics and how to handle phase transitions.

 

The challenge is fine except for people who 1. Rush through content 2. don't know how to build their own class 3. refuse to communicate and 4. refuse to do mechanics.

Too many people expect others to break the bars- you can see this on the transition to the mini boss platforms where people were using portable charges instead of their own... because a LOT of people still have no idea what abilities remove breakbars and your developers have actually created classes and weapons with *zero* breakbar abilities leaving them zero incentive to do anything. The fight isn't the issue, it's the players and it's developer clarity for as the game has progressed. When you expect people to only learn how the game operates from a wiki page, this is what happens. So you're going to have a small dedicated few to try and encourage the rest but most of them will try to brute force. I mean.. people still fail on Octovine so...

[castlemanic.3198]

I'm not optimistic about these changes tbh. It's not what i think needs to happen. but i'm willing to try with these changes. Give it a few shots once this update rolls out. see if it's better this way. it seems like it might be better this way from what i've read but we'll have to see how it works out when it goes live. so for now i'm tabling trying to get the siege turtle until this update rolls out. looking forward to getting the siege turtle.

[Vlad Morbius.1759]

2 minutes ago, Shadowmoon.7986 said:

You keep using that word, but i do not think you know what it means. Rng has nothing to do with it. If you want a completion join a guild dedicated to it like people did when TT and Teq first came out.

If it doesn't automatically drop after completing the content it's RNG so go away.

[ribchop.1736]

Thank you for not just nerfing it. These changes should definitely address the problems we've been having with it. Having ran this 16 times now and in a leading / commanding role for about half of those, these changes should address everything. The extra 90 seconds from the orb phase itself is enough to make 6 of the 18 failed runs pass, other runs failed due to lack of CC, or people not going to the tail. Each of those was caused by lack of communication when the person with the commander tag wasn't calling things out.

I and many others love the difficulty of the content, please don't make this a spam one fest, make people learn the game, and keep up the good work! EOD is by far the best expansion the game has seen