Upcoming Changes to "The Battle For The Jade Sea"

[SpecterMAT.7306]

I left the game cuz of this meta. I got tired of fight RNG just waste my time and there is nothing much to do except fish grinding...
I guess I will wait for the living story update if there will be any...

[Xevius.6174]

It's really a very nice meta event, but the average player base doesn't claim to beat such an event.
In a group of 50 people there are already 40 who usually don't use food or make no move to get out of the yellow circles and get hit directly.

As an instance like Dragon Storm, that would work fine. A lighter meta in Public and a harder one in Private instance. And remove the turtle as a reward, as the current approach just ensures that people who aren't interested in such hard content play the event. 

[Kitta.3657]

I think this response is absolutely the most appropriate way to answer to the feedback and I'm truly glad to see the intentional design of a challenging meta that requires players to interact with eachother for communication and coordination which in turns help form communities and bonds. People are way too self-centered to see why this type of design exists and it's something that gw2 has suffered from a lot over the years.

I also find questionable the feet stomping from a playerbase that has had most rewards handed to them on a silver platter whose being asked to earn it. You don't need to be a super pro gamer (to all the people who feel personally victimized) to achieve success in this. We went in with proper organization of about 20 people - mainly WvWers so not even people who know the ins and out of pve - and the rest filled in through map and LFG, this after this patch and we easily won the encounter. This was my 2nd success (1 prior to patch) with only 5 attempts in total. As the knowledge of the encounter spreads, people will eventually adapt and it won't be an issue no more. 

The satisfying feeling from succeeding towards a challenge is already quite rewarding but adding a mount as part of the reward scheme is the cherry on top. It has made me appreciate the siege turtle far more than I think I would have if I just unlocked it as easily as I have with previous mounts. Plus it is implemented without an arbitrary timegate and in my opinion this is the right direction.

This meta was truly a pleasant surprise out of End of Dragons and I'm really grateful the team chose this route, thank you!

Edited March 7, 2022 by Kitta.3657

[Uthgoul.8360]

14 hours 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.

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.

If you want to increase completion rate, take out the RNG. The tail mechanic should occur in the same way as the phases or it should contribute damage to the boss. Make it occur at 75%, 50% and 25% so it can be planned for, or allow damaging the tail to do a chunk of damage to the head. It isn't enjoyable when you get 7 tails in a battle, it doesn't require skill, its just "oh well, there goes two hours". It leaves the player with a taste of kitten in their mouth because "well we just had a bad roll, so that was two hours wasted"...  I've now wasted 14 hours on this map event, and I am losing my willingness to play this game, I've stopped recommending the expansion to guild members and friends, solely because of the horrible experience that is this fight...

[Raizel.8175]

Some well-intentioned suggestions to "fix" Battle for the Jade Sea:

First of all, there were already suggestions for fixing the greens mechanic. We can iterate on these:

• Have a certain number of people reach the platform for the phase to end. That way, people can't hold the whole map ransom by simply doing nothing.
• Implement a (short) CD to reach the next orb as whisp.
• If said CD runs out or the specified number of people didn't reach the platform, whisps die.

Now, we still need to tackle the abysmal RNG:

• There needs to be an (I) CD on certain mechanics - at least both the tail mechnic and boss movement needs to be on some sort of (I) CD.
• After the defiance bar break, no other mechnic should occur for a set amount of time in order to reward breaking the defiance bar with a burst phase - in return, you may reduce the duration of the Exposed debuff to ~20 seconds.
• Bind the tail mechanic to the defiance bar mechanic. There should at most be two consecutive tails per 20% phase which should then be followed by a defiance bar mechanic.
• Damaging the tail should also damage the boss - maybe not by 100%, but it should at least damage the boss.

Maybe the community has some more ideas, but the RNG definitely has to go. The huge impact RNG has on this encounter doesn't make the encounter difficult, but unfair and annoying. You have to keep in mind that this is a 2h long open world meta event that's supposed to be done and completed on a daily basis for years to come which also locks a main mastery line behind itself. Being difficult is ok, being annoying and unfair isn't! Also, I don't know the rewards yet, because I only ever failed, but if the rewards aren't siginificant enough for people to join the event, people just won't do it in the future. We already had that problem in PoF. Even though you've added a Hero's Choice chest there far too late, people are still only rarely doing PoF meta events. In that regard, the meta events on the first 3 EoD maps are already useless. Please, Arena Net, learn from you past mistakes.

Edited March 5, 2022 by Raizel.8175

[OneAutumnLeaf.3915]

Think by now I did like 20 times still nowhere till the turle the few times the squad I was in got to single digit %  let the rng tail start. Seen so many people frustated due the turtle being locked behind the meta,now you can see regulary in squad chat people asking how do you get a refund... honestly don't blame them after the last try where we did like almost no mistakes just the rng was a b.... caused us to fail.

Edit: also to get into a meta first spam 20min to get into a map>hope the squad is organized>pray people will do it properly>pray for RNG. I been in good and bad groups and sadly I got further in boss % with a horrible group only because they had a better RNG.

Edited March 5, 2022 by OneAutumnLeaf.3915

[Zephire.8049]

1 hour ago, GingeraleDragon.5804 said:

The Griffon and Skyscale weren't locked beyond content that the average player may or may not do. A time and moneysink? Sure, but not behind a boss fight that doesn't have enough time to complete it.

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.

[Tachenon.5270]

I haven't made it to this meta yet and at this point I can't say I'm particularly eager to get there, but Arenanet's response to all the complaints about it reminds me of Joon in 'Weight of the World'.

Edited March 5, 2022 by Tachenon.5270

[aikatara.3462]

Wow this meta is so frustrating .  About 30 minutes doing essentially nothing but waiting at the beginning and then failing at 4% with an organised map. At the moment I just want to get my Siege Turtle somehow and then I don't want to do this meta ever again.

The spamming of "join map" at full squads reminds me of Dragon's Stand at the beginning sigh.

Edited March 5, 2022 by aikatara.3462

[Cranberry.5849]

15 hours ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

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.

This does not help even a bit! What difference does it make changing the Exposed from 10 sec to 30 sec when the Dragon will just swoop and goes to another side or the tail will appear even before it reaches 10 sec! Which HAPPENS SO FREQUENTLY!

[Nezekan.2671]

This is just a very bad event and is not even remotely close to other "finales" that we have in other expansions and living world seasons. It takes too long, the rewards are little and a lot of the mechanics are clunky. For example the mirage staff ambush does not hit the boss, and falls of the platform, same goes for most abilities that are similar to it. The breakbar on whirlpool is as big as the boss break bar. (EMP barely does 3% of it). So it's a mechanic that incentivizes player to die as quickly as possible, because it's a complete waste of time in a dps race boss for others to break this big of a break bar to free one player. The quicker you die, the better. Which makes having vitality detrimental. And many other thoughtless things in the event.

There is zero reason to this event after getting the turtle.

Edited March 5, 2022 by Nezekan.2671

[Nezekan.2671]

5 minutes ago, XECOR.2814 said:

I love how people start dying inside if they can't get 1 reward easily in open world. Ah gj anet. All the open world toxic casuals are exposing themselves. Love that they are gatekept away from turtle.

Yes, it was epitome of game design when in Teapot stream everyone were asked to switch to meta builds of PoF and HoT and almost no one in the group had an EoD spec. When you make an event in an expansion in which the expansion's e-specs can't beat it 🤣

Also the irony of you being toxic here and calling out "toxicity" is not lost on anyone.

Edited March 5, 2022 by Nezekan.2671

[Suranis.8279]

Personally, I don't give a single kitten about the Turtle.  I don't. I just want to complete this for the achievement, tell the voices in my head "eff off I did it suxxers!"  and then do something more fun with what is left of my precious life.

The way it is people wont be doing the meta in 3 weeks time when they finally luck out and get a completion, at which point they raise the holy Middle finger of Antioch to this crap and never do it again.

[XECOR.2814]

5 minutes ago, Nezekan.2671 said:

Yes, it was epitome of game design when in Teapot stream everyone were asked to switch to meta builds of PoF and HoT and almost no one in the group had an EoD spec. When you make an event in an expansion in which the expansion's e-specs can't beat it 🤣

Also the irony of you being toxic here and calling out "toxicity" is not lost on anyone.

Where is the rule that says you need to beat the game with EOD specs. In fact it makes sense that you use pof specs to beat the game while unlocking eod specs along the way. Also there is nothing toxic about it. Its just common sense you would have greater rewards behind greater challenges. Why so mad tho. LUL

[Raizel.8175]

7 minutes ago, XECOR.2814 said:

I love how people start dying inside if they can't get 1 reward easily in open world. Ah gj anet. All the open world toxic casuals are exposing themselves. Love that they are gatekept away from turtle.

Well... I do raids and fractals frequently and still think that the meta event is badly designed and needs a serious overhaul. Design-wise, the meta event is just pure trash. The impact of the RNG-aspect is far too strong. Obviously, they want to reward players for doing mechanics. If the Exposed debuff, which should lead to a burst phase, gets swallowed by the tail mechanic and/or boss movement, you just ridicule players. The tail mechanic itself is a huge punishment with no reward behind itself. Doing that mechanic should also lead to a reward - be it that damaging the tail also damages Soo-Won or whatsoever.

[Nezekan.2671]

2 minutes ago, XECOR.2814 said:

Where is the rule that says you need to beat the game with EOD specs. In fact it makes sense that you use pof specs to beat the game while unlocking eod specs along the way. Also there is nothing toxic about it. Its just common sense you would have greater rewards behind greater challenges. Why so mad tho. LUL

Some people don't have past expansions and this is the last map, you will have plenty of hero points to fully unlock the new e-specs. There is in fact a "rule" about it. Or are you going to mock poor people as well?

Secondly, you were celebrating how some people can't get something in the game. It's as toxic as it gets. But if this is "common sense" to you, as you said, I feel sorry for anyone who has to interact with you daily.

[kaesebrezen.3104]

I'm just done with this shitshow of a meta.... 

 

If you seriously expect players to commit one and a half hour to an event, then these one and a half hour should be fun. The whole part of the meta up to the final fight is just an utter waste of time with practically nothing exciting. The escorts are dull and boring, and just eat up time. They simple should be part of the pre-event to fill the bars, but that would actually add something useful to the boring rest of the map events. And we really can't have people having fun preparing the meta.

 

The fight itself is a massive pile of RNG crap:

- When your boss decides to only use the breakbar when she's 2-3% before a phase change - what's the point of the break bar bonus?

- When the boss cosecutively swaps side and becomes untargetable - how are you expect to meet the DPS check?

- Why does the boss even have the melee smash/shockwave mechanic, when it's flat out possible for her to never use it?

- Want another fun combo the boss can do? You somehow get an early breakbar, you get your 10 seconds in. The boss swoops to the other side, and immediately gets her tail shield - totally effective to increase the break debuff to 30 seconds.

 

Here, i'll make a bet: Remove the side-swap mechanic the boss does, and the kill percentage will skyrocket.

[Kerin.9125]

15 hours ago, Vexona.6452 said:

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...

This is so true.  This game is one of the worst MMOs I play at teaching players obscure mechanics, I've lost count at the number of times I've screamed at the screen "HOW THE F*** DO I DO THAT" when told to do something I've never heard of or had to do before but now am blocked from progression until I discover some obscure mechanic. by having to use Google because the damned game sure isn't telling me.

As for the EoD event, I'm not on the map but clearly ANet took all the "they're too easy" replies to their questionnaire last year and designed something only easily doable by the 5%ers of do the raids .. I knew that's what was going to happen and accepted world events were likely no longer the fun they'd been, but using them to gate expansion-PR-features is something I didn't expect ANet to do to screw-over those not in the 5%er category.

Edited March 5, 2022 by Kerin.9125

[Nezekan.2671]

1 minute ago, XECOR.2814 said:

First you flexing legendaries when everyone knows it just a time sink not a challenge is pathetic. Then coming onto me that "who are you to lecture me". So bad.
Second, the mentality that you failed because of mechanics having flaws and then coming onto forums for complaining even tho you overcame the event is so pathetic. If you want to report bugs do it in bugs section not in the game update thread. I have no problems with reporting bugs.
Third, there is nothing wrong with RNG. If you cant accept that RNG is always a part of challenge then you might not have played any other game than gw2.
Do not lie to yourself, the percentage of people failing because of bugs is in single digit than people failing because they cant adapt in combat in gw2 and are not aware or just plain bad.
I am not celebrating, i just find it funny how all the people who live on free handouts turn toxic the moment they cant get free brain afk rewards. Just enjoying the circus you guys are making. And its the people like you who make this game dead with this free handout for everyone mentality, dont want to face any challenge. First one to call the manager. LULW

NONE of the raid bosses have a mechanic akin to you have X% chance to fail this boss, no matter what. This is not the RNG you are talking about when you talk about RNG in MMOs.

Since when raid legendary armor is just a "time sink". You need to kill every boss at least once.

It is well within my right to criticize an event in the game where ANET advertises as "finale", when it's full of bugs and unbeatable mechanics if RNG does not favor you. Not to mention it's unfun and too long and there is exactly zero reason to do this after getting the turtle. If this is the "finale" you want for your expansion, then it's doomed to fail already.

[toilet paper.8671]

I got the turtle before the nerf to the meta after 25 fails, now with the nerf the meta has become so easy and boring we finished the meta 4 minutes early in public map lol.

Most people who perma cry in map and forum should question themselves. 

If anet still nerfs the dragon it will be even more useless kek

 

[Nezekan.2671]

Just now, toilet paper.8671 said:

I got the turtle before the nerf to the meta after 25 fails, now with the nerf the meta has become so easy and boring we finished the meta 4 minutes early in public map lol.

Most people who perma cry in map and forum should question themselves. 

If anet still nerfs the dragon it will be even more useless kek

 

What is the point even, hard or easy, the rewards are useless past the first time and the event is not worth repeating. Dragonfall is ten times better than this in terms of smooth pre metas and rewards. I will just go back to that.

[DarkXi.3289]

You know what the problem is with "git gud scrubudubas" is in this case? The AI movement relies heavily on the RNG.

 

Had a group last night in which we did all the mechanics. Greens, platform bosses, wisps, tail, ccbar, you name it. On the last 4%, with 1+ min on the clock, the boss switches sides 5 times and off she goes with the invuln. We left her on 1%. From other fights, i've seen that this thing of kitten is not a happening on a regular basis. It's not like the fight was programmed to be "she gets to 5%, she switches sides 10 times, she tornadoes, throw in some wisps, make a shawarma and then, if you succed, you win". Nop.

 

So, your "git gud" feels more like a "go rub a rabbit foot, kiss a ginger, find a four-leaf clover" - git lucky. Oh yes, so much skill...

 

 

 

[toilet paper.8671]

2 minutes ago, Nezekan.2671 said:

What is the point even, hard or easy, the rewards are useless past the first time and the event is not worth repeating. Dragonfall is ten times better than this in terms of smooth pre metas and rewards. I will just go back to that.

 

yes true I agree the rewards are not satisfactory 

[kharny.3284]

congratulations on being so focussed on your "end of an era" event being hard that you totally forgot about it being fun....

Failed another sub 10% attempt due to random tailspawn/side changes...

 

Did you guys hire Ion from warcraft to make this event?

[XECOR.2814]

Just now, Nezekan.2671 said:

NONE of the raid bosses have a mechanic akin to you have X% chance to fail this boss, no matter what. This is not the RNG you are talking about when you talk about RNG in MMOs.

Since when raid legendary armor is just a "time sink". You need to kill every boss at least once.

It is well within my right to criticize an event in the game where ANET advertises as "finale", when it's full of bugs and unbeatable mechanics if RNG does not favor you. Not to mention it's unfun and too long and there is exactly zero reason to do this after getting the turtle. If this is the "finale" you want for your expansion, then it's doomed to fail already.

Sure, you can report the edge cases if there is a rng where it is theoretically impossible to beat the meta as a bug. But again dont cry here, we have a section for bug report. Also how can you tell no one will do it again after getting turtle. We are few days in the expansion and people haven't figured everything out yet and you are claiming whats gonna happen. Complaining this early in the expansion just because people cant roll over the event like rest of the content in the game instead of trying more and figuring stuff out and honestly just getting better at the game makes me take the stand im taking.