Upcoming Changes to "The Battle For The Jade Sea"

[Jajo.1428]

TIL: players really should just die in whirlpools, because this is clearly the intended way to deal with that mechanics.

[KurokouNekoki.7891]

Just now, Jajo.1428 said:

TIL: players really should just die in whirlpools, because this is clearly the intended way to deal with that mechanics.

Yeah.... say that when you have 23k Health and it takes 30 seconds to die off...
That also mean 30s + treking back to the platform. (even from the airship) that is at least a good minute of DPS cut short, times the ammount of times you are the target of that whirlpool.

[Vexona.6452]

5 hours ago, Sentient Anomaly.9473 said:

We’re looking forward to seeing how today’s “tail” adjustment plays out, and we’ll continue to iterate on the fight until it achieves our goal of being a challenging yet doable encounter for most of our players. Achieving that goal will require continued attention from us, and some patience and learning from our players. This situation feels not too dissimilar to the release of Tequatl, Triple Trouble, or Dragon Stand, all of which are popular encounters in Guild Wars 2 to this day.

We just did this and the bite "bug" is back , which I hadn't encountered before, and she chained 8 times. I have a video of it and everything. I would suggest going over that bug again and possibly reducing the break bars on the platform bosses if you can't fix it because at least then we can have a buffer if she decides to chain bite again.

[Zephire.8049]

9 minutes ago, Heibi.4251 said:

I raid weekly. This is the worst open world piece of trash I've ever seen. They are trying to satisfy the wrong players, believing they will get more players into the game. But in all actuality they will ultimately lose players. I'm really angry at this point, wondering what in the kitten they are thinking. They keep trying to defend this. The map will be abandoned after the 15th. All their hard work will be lost. We paid good money for this expansion only to be spit upon by ANET. 

It definitely reeks of "We know what players want and all they need is to be forced to do it and they'll love it like we do." People who like open world already know what they like and those curious about raiding can be put off by having a 50-person non-consensual raid forced on them out of the blue. No one benefits from this outside a handful of people.

All the pieces are there for people to genuinely love the meta—the mechanics are fun, the sound is amazing—but instead of appealing to the masses they focused on the minority of the minority and think they can drag people up to where they think people should be (and like what they like) and people will enjoy it, for some reason. Being someone who was forced (and attempted to be forced) into situations they don't like because "If I tried it, I'd like it" and "You just need to give it a chance" I can safely say all that did was turn me off of those things and stop trusting the people who decided they knew me better than I did.

I'm no longer a raider but I'm pretty sure raiders would complain about this if it were a raid boss, too. Frequent invulns, heavy RNG, and an "Enrage" timer that instantly wipes the raid if hit? I've seen raiders demand changes for far less.

[Cronospere.8143]

Truthfully I think the meta event is amazing. I like the build up phase. 

The actual boss fight is hard, which i like. But i failed with 2 full maps and 3 commanders. 

The mechanics are normal not hard. 

 

In my opinion: link the damage done to the tail to the health of the boss. 

[Heibi.4251]

ANET - are you really going to defend this META or are you going to admit you went overboard? Admitting you  were wrong is not a bad thing. In fact, the community will welcome such an admission. But if you continue to believe that you can do no wrong we will not trust you in the future. My money is not something you can count on in the future. If you check your financial records you will see that I have spent a lot on this game trying to support GW2. But I am currently reevaluating my support.  

Your March 15th alternative to acquiring the turtle is NOT THE SOLUTION.

Actions that I will be taking. No more purchasing GEMS with real money - I'm especially not buying any turtle skins. You've already lost that. I'd start thinking seriously about this. I'm not the only one here thinking this.

Just so you know - I've been playing this game from GW1 beta. I have been one of your most ardent supporters, even when you messed up.  I've probably spent more than 12k dollars on this game over the years. You have really gone this far to lose such an ardent supporter as myself. 

Edited March 10, 2022 by Heibi.4251

[Zauriel Mooncat.4968]

This event would feel more fullfilling if it dropped better loot AND AT LEAST one Legendary Insight for being a raid level difficulty event, and as every raid boss, one Legendary Insight per week. 

 

I dont believe the difficulty should be tweaked too much? Many times it just requieres good cordination. Taking the egg outside the event would very much render it COMPLETELY USELESS and no one would even dare touching the thing unless, again, loot is increased and there is an insetive to do it, such as an Legendary Insight per week, and a random assured drop of Lamplinghter Badges, a Blessing of the Jade Empress, or an Antique Summoning Stone (rarer drop than the other 2) per day. 

[Preppy.7046]

The fight is not hard, it's *random*.  The mechanics are all easy to follow once you die to them once, other than the awful surprise 3d jumping puzzle wisp phase.  (Wisp phase needs either bigger wisp hitboxes or more jumps or better jumps.  I've seen several very high DPS groups choke to death on the badly-designed wisp phase.  People stumble on normal jumping puzzles, I have no idea why injecting a non-practicable one as a critical factor to the fight was thought of as a fun idea.  It *looks* slick, but -- who has any ability to practice the mechanics other than anet employees?)

 

I really hope that anet is tracking attackable time in the boss fight.  The boss and sub-bosses getting the zoomies isn't something the average very solid GW2 player can work around.  (The giant CC bars requiring massive EMP usage seems dubious as well, especially if you're going to reset EMP / special action equip twice in the fight.)  I don't know what your analytics will say post-change, but it sure seems like attackable time is the defining factor of group success.

[Michaelsnakefang.9642]

1 minute ago, Heibi.4251 said:

ANET - are you really going to defend this META or are you going to admit you went overboard? Admitting you  were wrong is not a bad thing. In fact, the community will welcome such an admission. But if you continue to believe that you can do no wrong we will not trust you in the future. My money is not something you can count on in the future. If you check your financial records you will see that I have spent a lot on this game trying to support GW2. But I am currently reevaluating by support.  

 

This should never have been an issue. The other 3 maps were just fine and exceeded my expectations even.

I don't know why they felt the need to do this to the last map. 

I was there day 1 for every update since Grothmar Valley. When they released a meta boss, it was always fun AND doable.

 

It's been more than a week now. No one should have to wait 7+ days to get to finish a product they purchased. After every failure, people are even more demoralized and tired. Where at once I was going to ask my friends to join this game so we can turtle together, I'm now telling them to stay the hell away. 

10 years of buildup for this? it's a kitten joke.

[Michaelsnakefang.9642]

2 minutes ago, Preppy.7046 said:

The fight is not hard, it's *random*. 

 

That's mainly what makes it hard.

[Tyson.5160]

2 hours ago, Cynder.2509 said:

The word casual explains it all sadly... 
So many great metas have been ruined. Also a lot of us long time players only play rarely because of nothing to do in this game at all except the weekly raids and daily T4 fractals. This is the reason why such a good game has begun dying down. There's not much to do for veterans. 

Don’t worry CM strikes are coming. I imagine the same with LWS6 as well.

[Forgotten Legend.9281]

6 hours ago, Sentient Anomaly.9473 said:

Hello everyone, we have an update from the Guild Wars 2 team. We'll be localizing this for German, French, and Spanish as soon as possible:

Hi all,

Last week we made some changes to the final encounter of the Jade Sea meta event to help improve the accessibility of the fight, and we’re happy to see that the rate of successful event completions continues to rise each day. We’ve kept a close eye on the community discussion after those updates were made, and today we have two more changes that we’d like to discuss.

First, effective immediately, we’ve reduced the frequency at which the Jade Sea Final Boss activates their 'Tail' by about ~50%. This will give players longer windows to deal damage to the boss and contend with the various other mechanics of the encounter. To be clear, this change does not require a game build to take effect.

Second, in the March 15 update, we’ll be providing players with an alternate path for acquiring the Siege Turtle Egg, which unlocks the collection required for the Siege Turtle mount. We’ll be adding a new vendor to the Jade Sea map that will sell the Siege Turtle Egg at the cost of 200 Writs of the Jade Sea. The Siege Turtle Egg will continue to be awarded to players that successfully complete the “Battle for Jade Sea” meta event, so players will have the choice to unlock the collection via a challenging meta encounter or through time investment.

We’re looking forward to seeing how today’s “tail” adjustment plays out, and we’ll continue to iterate on the fight until it achieves our goal of being a challenging yet doable encounter for most of our players. Achieving that goal will require continued attention from us, and some patience and learning from our players. This situation feels not too dissimilar to the release of Tequatl, Triple Trouble, or Dragon Stand, all of which are popular encounters in Guild Wars 2 to this day.

As always, thank you for your feedback!

We'll see you in-game,

• The Guild Wars 2 Team

My own experience, before the "bite" update in the hotfix, i had never seen the 20% tri-mini-boss phase. afterward, i saw it twice. BUT, it was very common to get both the tale and a break-bar on main boss at the same time. and there were soooo many swaps. after the bite update, i saw the 20% phase twice, at the 3:00 to go mark. but failed at 19%

 

today after the tail change, we had 40% at 11:00 left on the timer, and then RNG started all the swapping and bites and whirlpools. there were so many invulnerable mechanics that we finished the 20% tri-mini-boss phase with 3:00 left.(we killed the tri-mini-bosses in about 2 minutes methinks) and then there were again, so many invulnerable mechanics that we lost at about 2%..so basically it took about 6 minutes to go from 40% to 20%, after going from 100% to 40% in 9 minutes. RNG invulnerable swaps totally killed our run. some of the people in squad said they had NEVER seen that many swaps and bites and whirlpools before, and some of them have more victories than i have failed attempts. (about ten, i think)

 

it almost seems that reducing the tail has caused the invulnerable mechanics to increase, even though it gave more time for DPS. nobody can DPS the boss when it's invulnerable.

 

another note: since y'all mentioned rewards in this thread. it really seems like there should be more Boss chests during the meta, like Dragon's Stand, instead of only after completing the entire meta (even though there needs to be these final rewards, too). there should be (popup) chests after the waypoints, more after the lanes, more (popup) chests after charging the crystals, and THEN the final chests after the boss. otherwise, it feels like doing all of dragon's stand without getting rewards. Also, there should be popup chests during the pre-meta based on participation on map plus the total map readiness level. (any HoT map gives out considerably more rewards for its meta, making DE feel like any old low level core map.)

 

the difference between Tequatl, Triple Trouble, and Dragon's Stand, is that Tequatl is a single event that gives rewardsa after each phase, because it phase is actually a sub-event of the main event causing a chain. Triple Trouble is technically 6 events, since there's 3 lanes, an escort in each lane leads to the boss of said lane, and then the phases. DS meta consists of many events, and therefore rewards many more rewards. right now DE main meta has basically 12 events, starting with 3 escorts, culminating with the final boss, which can be split into sub-events like Tequatl. the trouble is DE meta feels like getting Tequatl rewards for Dragon's Stand meta clear.

 

PS: i've already failed about ten metas in this map, so i already have well over 200 writs of the zone, and it wouldn't surprise me if many others are in the same boat, that they've already spent enough to time in zone to acquire the egg alternately.so, if i don't obtain it from a meat win before the update, i thank you in advance for the alternate acquisition method.

 

PPS: Thanks for watching this and making changes. I know y'all are still watching it , probably especially watching for any new bugs introduced with any changes, too. so again, thanks for (mostly) fun meta.

EDIT: [SUGGESTION] it seems like there should be an etxra event added to the game to allow people to practice the wisp jumping. there are many tall hills in this zone (and others) that would make excellent places to add a new type of wisp adventure jumping puzzle into EoD maps. and by adventure, i mean the game mode introduced in HoT

Edited March 10, 2022 by Forgotten Legend.9281
added suggestion for wisp adventures

[UNOwen.7132]

I think people are overreacting a bit. Yes, the meta is clearly overtuned, and its gonna need to be tuned down, but the meta itself is quite fun. Its a nice, flavourful map. It just needs a lower balance point. To act like Anet is attacking the community is very silly.

[scerevisiae.1972]

I don't think the meta is too hard, it's more a case of needing a full map of semi-decent players with decent gear... which is hard unless you're part of a mega guild.

 

I would prefer NOT to nerf the difficulty but rather to hjave the boss "soft enrage" instead of a hard time limit to complete. ie, instead of just losing at 00:00 the boss gets harder (and/or the rez WP is removed) and then at 02:30 over the time limit, harder again, and then full wipe at 05:00 over.

 

That way the baddies can die off and get carried by those remaining if the fight is close. Also having zero rewards on failure after a 2hr event feelsprettybadman.

 

ps: PLEASE rework Catalyst Hammer into an actual hybrid ranged weapon, the majority of Eles hate it: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/109394-how-would-you-rate-catalyst 

 

Edited March 10, 2022 by scerevisiae.1972

[Ruisen.9471]

Did the meta again tonight with an open world group, got lucky near the end where the boss wasn't constantly switching sides, and finished with 5 minutes left.    Imo, the meta is doable with a good commander so long as they make the "got lucky" boss uptime permanent, and fix the darn whirlpools's insane break bars.   

Also, the meta should just start at the escorts.   Ain't nobody got time for 2 hours of waiting simulator to do this meta.

 

2 hours ago, Firebeard.1746 said:

HoT metas aren't popular because people enjoy them the most. They're popular because

1) They're directly tied to legendaries
2) They drop really rare infusions. 
3) Bauble farms (Neither PoF or EoD to my knowledge let you directly farm valuable vendor junk. I haven't quite figured EoD yet, but PoF it seemed random/not tied to map bonus rewards). 

Very few people I believe would say that HoT is the gold standard in terms of how the meta FEELs. It's definitely doable in large swarms, which is what people do. Though the current EoD implementations even miss that mark with how much they're expecting of players. Swarms of nooblets can still survive HoT. That's not the case here in EoD. 

WP was surprised at people saying they liked HoT better, but if you were paying attention, to me it sounded like more for the reasons I mentioned above than the meta design itself. HoT becomes palatable once you're an experience player, but I by far enjoyed Season 4 and even some season 3 metas better and I bet you that's true for most of the player base. 

That's not to say some people don't enjoy HoT at all, but it's far from Anet's best work and I'm tired of everyone listening way too much to elitists and ruining this game. You also have to realize, when you're getting information from a streamer like WP or like teapot, you're getting some of the most hard core opinions sampled, because they're popular I would expect with most of the die-hards. Not necessarily the consistent casual playerbase. And I would highly recommend taking what they say with a grain of salt for this reason. 

 

I think HoT is considered the standard because people still do them 7 year later, every single day.   

At the end of the day, that's what you want in game design, something that people will still play 7 years later.  LWS3 had some really cool maps, but at the end of the day its meaningless when nobody plays it.

Edited March 10, 2022 by Ruisen.9471

[Jajo.1428]

53 minutes ago, KurokouNekoki.7891 said:

Yeah.... say that when you have 23k Health and it takes 30 seconds to die off...
That also mean 30s + treking back to the platform. (even from the airship) that is at least a good minute of DPS cut short, times the ammount of times you are the target of that whirlpool.

All I'm getting from this is, that it's not worth it for people to CC you out, because distracting them loses more DPS overall. So yes, dying and letting you die is the correct decision. Also, you are now double nerfing the group by sacrificing your DPS for health. How selfish of you! 😱

[Vexona.6452]

5 hours ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

It should still be a challenge. Check it out this evening and let me know how you do. 🙂

I'm going to provide feedback here, too. Due to the programming, because you reduced the tail phase it brought back more bites as a filler. I'm guessing you have X-chance for Y or Z to happen and because you put acid breath/break bar on a lower chance it means that bite will go instead. Which it did- 8 times. I never had this "feature" in a prior event but I did tonight and it felt awful because there was no DPS or anything we could have done. Please look into the platform boss breakbars instead so we can burn them down quicker. If you're going to remove our ability to use EMPs then we need compensation. Btw? 300 breakbar damage doesn't tell us anything if you won't display the numbers and you're missing several abilities that work which have confused a few players who didn't know they had break bar abilities. Thank you.

[Preppy.7046]

15 minutes ago, Michaelsnakefang.9642 said:

 

That's mainly what makes it hard.

This is RNG, which is random/chaotic, not "hard".  If we have uncapped/unguided RNG, then one team might have zero tail slaps and another might have the maximum possible number.  It's still the same encounter, but I think we can agree that one encounter is going to be remarkably easier than the other.

 

This fight is more random than hard.  The actual mechanics are introductory level at best, other than the wisp phase..  "Don't stand here or die.  Don't be here or die.  Coordinate boss death or suffer time penalty.  Use EMP CC now."  None of that is new nor surprising, nor particularly difficult.  I would be utterly fascinated by the analytics anet has on the boss patterns/summaries of successful and failed runs: I suspect boss RNG decides the success of the fight.

[XceptOne.9134]

Woot this is awesome. As someone who's only done the fight once (and thought it was a most excellent meta) this is a welcome change!

[Patsoor.6425]

12 minutes ago, Heibi.4251 said:

ANET - are you really going to defend this META or are you going to admit you went overboard? Admitting you  were wrong is not a bad thing. In fact, the community will welcome such an admission. But if you continue to believe that you can do no wrong we will not trust you in the future. My money is not something you can count on in the future. If you check your financial records you will see that I have spent a lot on this game trying to support GW2. But I am currently reevaluating my support.  

I've done the meta 5 or 6 times and succeeded once. (other runs were 11% 16% and +20%)
I don't know if you were arround when Tequatl came out? It took ppl more than a week to kill that boss.
They succeeded this meta already on day 1.  Change things arround, look at it different.
If we would smash every meta every single time when we tried... ppl would complain even harder becouse the meta is worthless and Anet didn't put any effort in. Now they put a lot of effort & mechanics in and... ppl complain.
Lesson? ppl will always complain.  I can imagine after 15 or 20 runs failing everytime, I think I'd be pissed off to, so I get your anger.
Give ppl the time to adjust. You do raids every week, so do I. But not everybody is doing the dps(or stack boons) like raid ppl do.
And at least half of the map are not raid ppl so half of the damage output by ppl is worth nothing. (check arc dps meters...)
Anet made the mistake, is that for this meta they are asking a lot of everybody. Casuals might want to improve, but you can not expect that they become a zero to hero in 1 meta. Anet should have a build up to this meta. So ppl learn certain mechanics/builds/gear/boons before getting to the final meta.  (they tried)
If you provide food, make sure everyone has the defense & offensive buff  and the 10%map buff..  it will help nothing if the player is running 6different gearpieces & maybe not even 6runes.. & not the best build.
All of this is "normal" for raid ppl, but is complete new for casuals. And some casuals will never care about these things.
Everybody will get the turtle at some point now, so thats already a good thing. And they nerfed the meta now, so even more ppl can get the mount from the meta.



I think they did not go overboard and they don't have to admit anything. They just don't see that there's a huge difference in "raid ppl" and casual players. And there are a lot of casuals.

An other problem is: ppl are not doing this meta over and over again (like AB or TD) bc of reward.
This 2hour train rewards jack kitten if you already have the turtle egg. which makes it so that the raid or farming meta's ppl, are not going farm this one so they keep away from the map since: 1 it fails more than it succeeds, 2 it has kitten rewards when it succeeds. So those players are going to be less and less frequent on the map. Leaving other players behind trying and failing even more.  That is one of the problems imo.
Why would some1 who has the turtle do a 2h meta when the chance of succes is really smoll, and if it succeeds.. reward is jack kitten.

 

[Tungsten Monarch.6058]

6 hours ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

It should still be a challenge. Check it out this evening and let me know how you do. 🙂

It's not a challenge, a Challenge is something you have control over. Logically and Rationally explain how it's a challenge for any single player, to have 49 people be at a same skill level as you, to beat a meta, with randoms, to get that  turtle egg. ... you may not pick the people, you may not set their builds, you may not control the people. Spend two hours doing this, tell us how it goes. Meanwhile I'll do what I've seen others on my map do, I'll go fishing during your Meta event and invite others.

[Tungsten Monarch.6058]

6 hours ago, Sentient Anomaly.9473 said:

Hello everyone, we have an update from the Guild Wars 2 team. We'll be localizing this for German, French, and Spanish as soon as possible:

Hi all,

Last week we made some changes to the final encounter of the Jade Sea meta event to help improve the accessibility of the fight, and we’re happy to see that the rate of successful event completions continues to rise each day. We’ve kept a close eye on the community discussion after those updates were made, and today we have two more changes that we’d like to discuss.

First, effective immediately, we’ve reduced the frequency at which the Jade Sea Final Boss activates their 'Tail' by about ~50%. This will give players longer windows to deal damage to the boss and contend with the various other mechanics of the encounter. To be clear, this change does not require a game build to take effect.

Second, in the March 15 update, we’ll be providing players with an alternate path for acquiring the Siege Turtle Egg, which unlocks the collection required for the Siege Turtle mount. We’ll be adding a new vendor to the Jade Sea map that will sell the Siege Turtle Egg at the cost of 200 Writs of the Jade Sea. The Siege Turtle Egg will continue to be awarded to players that successfully complete the “Battle for Jade Sea” meta event, so players will have the choice to unlock the collection via a challenging meta encounter or through time investment.

We’re looking forward to seeing how today’s “tail” adjustment plays out, and we’ll continue to iterate on the fight until it achieves our goal of being a challenging yet doable encounter for most of our players. Achieving that goal will require continued attention from us, and some patience and learning from our players. This situation feels not too dissimilar to the release of Tequatl, Triple Trouble, or Dragon Stand, all of which are popular encounters in Guild Wars 2 to this day.

As always, thank you for your feedback!

We'll see you in-game,

• The Guild Wars 2 Team

What is a Writ of the Jade Sea, do you mean Writ of Dragons End?

[KurokouNekoki.7891]

42 minutes ago, UNOwen.7132 said:

I think people are overreacting a bit. Yes, the meta is clearly overtuned, and its gonna need to be tuned down, but the meta itself is quite fun. Its a nice, flavourful map. It just needs a lower balance point. To act like Anet is attacking the community is very silly.

Let me guess, someone who has came here with only one run... *scratch that* one "Attempt" under their belt.

The first time IS fun because IT IS NEW, after that though, the effect is HEAVILY reduced, after the 5th time, you have seen everything you needed to see!

And for this META IT IS literally everything.

- You had the chance to try all 3 Escorts,
- All 5 Dragon Energies,
- All 5 Crystals Defenses,
- The "Green" Wipsy puke mechanic,
- The Tail Nonesense,
- The Slamming of the Doom Fist,
- The Whirlpools of Agony,
- Having to Warp back to the Airship and Launch Pad yourself onto that roof again,
and
- All 5 Splitted Dragon Champion Bosses.

10 hours Spent (1h Pre-1h META) with nothing more than one cheap weapon (a skin that comes in two different colors admitedly).

If by any chance you cleared it in 5 Grats, but not a lot of us has done this.

Edited March 10, 2022 by KurokouNekoki.7891

[Huldrelokk.6598]

6 hours ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

It should still be a challenge. Check it out this evening and let me know how you do. 🙂

Who got the turtle through the hard way before nerfs should get a chad title 🙃

Edited March 10, 2022 by Huldrelokk.6598

[Suranis.8279]

In a Raid if you fail at a stage you are back doing it again inside 3 or 4 minutes. When you insist you get one try at a Raid Boss every 2 hours, I'll believe the Elitists are all about de Chllnge.

So what about it guys? How about we introduce real risk/reward into Raids and put in a 2 hour fail timer into your "Hard content?" And I'm sorry, I wouldn't have kept coming back to the game over 8 years if there was "nothing to do".

I'm sorry about contributing to the sniping fight between leetsts and everyone else, but come on.

In fact, if people have put 20 attempts at this, investing 40 hours of their life into it, after failing every time, they are anything but "casual." You at still get Raid Currency on a fail, and all you have to do is trot back to the starting point like a good little puppy. We come back an hour later after getting eff all. "Casual" my kitten.