Upcoming Changes to "The Battle For The Jade Sea"

[Stelawrat.6589]

16 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. 

 

Keeping in mind that I consider myself to be a very average player, maybe even worse 😟I still regularly follow WP, Teapot & others like Vallun & Mukluk, with a view to learning. There are lots more as well, that I check on, for the lighter side.

They each have their own style, their own target audience & yet they all appeal to me. They're leagues ahead of me, so I don't try a lot of what they suggest, but I've made good use of some things that they've taught me.

At the end of the day, they're just players like the rest of us, but theirs' is a kind of devotion, a dedication to the game, that few of us have I think & if I can learn from them, then I'm sure that the, casual playerbase can as well. 

Edit 4 hours later: Or not...

Edited March 10, 2022 by Stelawrat.6589

[Gilosean.3805]

59 minutes ago, Heretic.6928 said:

As is, any success rate below 50 - 60% is untenable. Someone said above in their 20 attempts they had success twice, and seemed happy about it?! With 10% success rate in a 2 hour meta?! Makes no sense. I'm sorry, but you cannot ask players who have a purpose in the game to spend hours upon hours for literally no payout. 

 

I am really thinking of leaving the game now. Why did I even pre order or buy gems. The sour taste in my mouth probably won't wash away for weeks. GW2 is the only game I play, but I am genuinely thinking of leaving. I have been unable to do multiple metas in maps (bugs all over the 1st map meta). Never do I remember having this much frustration in 10 years of playing. 

 

There's still a ton of stuff to do in the game that's not the expac. I've played for nearly 10 years too, and haven't even touched on a lot of content. 

 

Also - this is  pretty typical. ANet testers and designers design an area that would be challenging for them & the most vocal (i.e. fastest, most invested) players, release the expansion, discover that woops! 99.99% of players aren't like that, have to redesign things.  HoT metas had the exact same thing happen.  It's not because ANet hates players or whatever, it's because the people they're hearing from between expansions are the same people who post git gud in the the forums.  

 

That said, they seem weirdly wedded to the RNG parts of this boss fight. Why on earth they didn't do a set rotation like literally every other meta, I have no idea.  The fight would be really fun if w e weren't getting hosed by RNG left, right and center.  ANet knows nobody wants RNG, especially not in something that's necessary for progression. This decision must make some kind of sense internally, but I sure don't see it. 

[Hauwlyn.8051]

1 hour ago, NeutralBurn.3829 said:

Streamers aren't the heart and soul of GW2. Who cares about them? Who cares if they think they're the biggest, or have most followers, or whatever. They don't represent the vast majority of the players, so no, Anet doesn't need to feel any obligation to "consider his deeds."  If anything, the exact opposite is true.. People like your "biggest streamer" are part of the problem, not the solution.

And given that the mechanic between Dragon's Stand and Dragon's End are VASTLY different, there is absolutely zero reason to draw comparison between them. That's like saying "I can speed run Mario Bros 3 in 1/3rd the time of Mario 64." Completely irrelevant.

You're completely on the wrong wavelength with your post.

 

I take it you misunderstood me, everything I said discredits his opinion here. I'm merely using that "deeds" argument to show that he's arguing in bad faith when saying the meta is fine as it is, precisely because when he puts as much effort into dragon's stand, he crushes it much faster that is realistic to expect from random groups just knowing the mechanics, knowing said random groups can clear dragon's stand with ease despite the massive difference, and therefore pointing the devs false equivalency.There is absolutely no need to direct your opinion of that streamer's destructive behavior at me, you're preaching to the choir.

[KurokouNekoki.7891]

8 minutes ago, Stelawrat.6589 said:

Keeping in mind that I consider myself to be a very average player, maybe even worse 😟I still regularly follow WP, Teapot & others like Vallun & Mukluk, with a view to learning. There are lots more as well, that I check on, for the lighter side.

I often feel like their guides are mostly on a viewpoint of a veteran that knows a lot more, which doesn't take in account the level of knowledge a newcomer would have (when sometimes just saying CC = Crowd Control, might not be enough of an explanation for a newcomer).

Which leads to the guide being highly and purely subjective.

[Ruisen.9471]

9 hours ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

That's actually a good point. Making the event instanced would solve the problem.

Making an instanced version of this a hard raid encounter would probably make alot of the endgame people happy.  They already did all the dev work to make this fight, might as well use it as a raid too.

[NeutralBurn.3829]

6 minutes ago, Hauwlyn.8051 said:

I take it you misunderstood me, everything I said discredits his opinion here. I'm merely using that "deeds" argument to show that he's arguing in bad faith when saying the meta is fine as it is, precisely because when he puts as much effort into dragon's stand, he crushes it much faster that is realistic to expect from random groups just knowing the mechanics, knowing said random groups can clear dragon's stand with ease despite the massive difference, and therefore pointing the devs false equivalency.There is absolutely no need to direct your opinion of that streamer's destructive behavior at me, you're preaching to the choir.

I did misunderstand, and stand corrected.

[Stelawrat.6589]

11 hours ago, Leven Carby.1704 said:

Got to 20% then it was stalled, she was invincible until we broke people out of whirlpools (which takes the entire squad to CC) and then it did the 3 boss split so we ran out of time and failed this for now a 5th time. I could've used those 10 hours to get to Diamond 6 in WvW and finish working on legendary armor or countless other things. Instead I have next to nothing to show for it but frustration.

All this is making me feel is not wanting to try this again with people who are new and I totally understand why some people have gone the kill proof or ping your build route, which is antithetical to what open world events are supposed to be.

I guess I'll try again on or after Tuesday.

This ^^ - so important for us regulars to understand. The experienced players have nothing against regulars. It's not a hardcore vs casual problem, so I wish people would drop that attitude. 

It's the fault of the meta design & I trust that the devs will eventually work this all out. 

[yann.1946]

2 hours ago, NeutralBurn.3829 said:

So, rather predictably, the expansion has resulted in the same two things that several previous expansions/LS's have resulted in:

First: A small percent of the players boasting that since they had no problem at all with any of the content, that the majority of other players who DO have a problem, are wrong somehow. This is showing both on the forums, and in game, with lots of toxicity in the chat.

Seriously, how does bragging "Oh, I've run through 7 groups successfully so far" help any of the other players that are obviously struggling? All you've done is identify that you don't represent the rest of us.

The initial cheers of "Let's go get this turtle" from the first two days, took no time in evolving into "There's nothing wrong with the meta, you're just a bad player." Or LFGs kicking players out, if they didn't bring specific specs to the fight.  Yes, it's a significantly more difficult fight/mechanics, but the amount of player-shaming that is happening is unbelievable.

Second: After the initial rush to the new maps....now they're largely empty, except for the usual grouping of AFK players at jumping puzzles that ANet swears isn't permitted, but still does nothing about. Sure, there's going to be plenty of players in this forum who have alts, bots, etc and they'll scoff at this complaint. But to someone who doesn't, it's pretty disheartening to hop on the LFG menu, and rather than see any active groups - it's the same AFK players, over and over, asking for money. Really speaks to a "thriving population" when 100% of a map's LFGs are panhandling bots.

And yes, the maps do have players running around, let me be more clear: The metas/events from EoD just aren't compelling enough. After the first few days, it doesn't matter what time I log in, there's maybe only 1 or 2 LFGs in any of the maps. Case in point: at time of writing, zero LFGs in Seitung, Echovald, and DE. 7 LFGs in New Kaineng, all for the jumping puzzle.

Yesterday, there were a lot more LFGs, but just for fishing parties. While that's definitely fun, and I appreciate the casual feeling of it....what does it say about an expansion that barely 10 days after release that the largest draw to the area is....just fishing and ignoring everything else?

As a number of other folks have mentioned, this seems like a huge step back from previous expansions.

I do appreciate the alternate path to start the turtle collection. Good job. Still don't know why it wasn't unlocked at the end of the story, like the Skyscale was. Especially since the story is 15 chapters long. The start of the turtle seems like a reasonable reward at the end. Who decided it was a great idea to lock the only mount of the expansion behind a complicated meta? Especially given that ANet specifically stated it would be EASIER than skyscale. It should have gone like this:
"Hey, let's make this easier than skyscale."
"So, we should gate it behind a super hard meta."
"What? No. That's literally the opposite thing."

The end.

But as it's been observed, that creates even LESS incentive to attempt the meta. I'll still play it sometimes, as will others, because I think it's interesting - but surely you have to realize that it will only cause even more players to abandon the meta.  And once players have gotten their turtles...what percent do you think will actually come back to EoD? I'm not talking about rewards from metas and general loot, I'm talking about compelling enough content to WANT to return.

This really does feel like Istan, all over again. Get the few things you need from the map, and then there's no reason to go back to it.  Or worse, maps like Fields of Ruin. Cursed Shore? Straits of Devastation?

So, after 2 years of hype:
A cool turtle, that only a few can currently manage to get. To the point where ANet had to provide a second way to get it.
A boss fight that largely turns players away, because it wasn't tested properly.
One really pretty map, one city map that feels like a ghost town because it isn't nearly as populated as trailers showed, one map that feels like Tangled Depths all over, and a map is basically only for a meta. Like Dragonfall.
Fun Jade bots that sometimes help out, but of course, all the other jade mechanics are isolated to just EoD. Just like most of the Icebrood stuff is useful only in Icebrood.

Is this a triumph?
 

I have to ask, do you believe the "gid gud" people represent the majority of the "hardcore" scene and do you believe there comes toxicity from the other side or not? 

[Stelawrat.6589]

11 hours ago, NumNums.7935 said:

Commanded a group again today and failed.

 

 I only get 2-3 hours a day to play so only one attempt a day for me.  Got really organized relayed as much info about lanes, and boss fight. We divided up into two tags could get someone to do a third had 53 people between the two organized as best we could into sub groups. Its really hard to find enough boon support players.

 

Luckily the participation buff and jade buffs help with some boons. Lane phases where fast and good.

 

Then the boss.... 

 

Mechanically break bars where destroyed which is good, and we phased to 80% fast. She then still continued pretending she wasn't phased for at least 30 sec. 

 

Are rng after that was pretty bad.. but worst part was damage we just didn't have it like 8 people where doing around 20k dps and the rest where doing very bad dps.

 

Yes I understand this meta is doable and good hard content, but the real rng comes with how skilled the players that join you lfg are. Like should commanders start forcing people to switch builds and send them exotic gear thru mail? Even then they won't understand rotations well enough to perform it while doing mechanics.

 

Right now the only garenteed way to complete this meta is to join a community like hardstuck discord or other discords which try to organize externally first before going to the lfg, but that doesn't help the users using your in-game lfg feature.

 

The changes are good removing the turtle from the meta will possibly help get people off the map that are in it for the reward not the challenge. Idk tbh this should of been instanced, then we could have time to recruit people into the squads based on what we need, instead of having the meta map where players are fishing and doing other things once their on your map that spot is gone.

 

 

 

"...instead of having the meta map where players are fishing and doing other things once their on your map that spot is gone."

I think that the devs totally missed that; never considered that players outside of the group would be encouraged to leave the map, no matter what they were doing, enjoying the map. 

[NeutralBurn.3829]

15 minutes ago, yann.1946 said:

I have to ask, do you believe the "gid gud" people represent the majority of the "hardcore" scene and do you believe there comes toxicity from the other side or not? 

I have no idea what "gid gud" is.

I don't think that players that are vocally toxic in game represent the majority of a specific group of players. But, with the release of this meta, there does seem to be a much deeper line drawn between the more casual players, and other players complaining that those casual players are not up to some kind of standard. Their builds are weak. Their play style is bad, wrong, broken,  etc and so forth.

It's a group event, but nearly every group I've been in....once it fails, it turns into players blaming each other for the fail. And a lot of obscenity. I don't see this nearly as often in other metas that fail. Even finger pointing at individuals. It's a 40+ person event most of the time - 1 or 2 people did not cause the fail.

People consider lots of different things fun. For some, it's fashion wars. For some, it's every achievement possible. No player should be hearing that they're playing the game "wrong."

If this doesn't answer your question, please clarify, so I can answer better.

Edited March 10, 2022 by NeutralBurn.3829

[Squigglez.1236]

Just adding my vote that the rewards are crap, there should be rewards before killing the boss, and that the entire meta takes too long.

Make the pre events give drops too, or let the event start when each lane has high readiness, or make the event run every hour and half the time it takes. 2 hours of work for 20-30 chests is brutal.

[Xorthos.6947]

I feel like we were lied to about this reduced tail and swap nonsense.

 

We had 6.5 minutes to go after the triple champion kill.

 

She tailed 4 times and swapped 7 times in the last 20% of her health, and we failed due to complete inability to damage her.  THis is now the 5th time that she's gone ridiculous in the last 10-20% of her health.

 

0-24 now.  Every time I fail this meta I just log because it's infuriating at this point.  Back to Elden Ring...it's less frustrating than this meta..and that's saying a lot.

Edited March 10, 2022 by Xorthos.6947

[Hauwlyn.8051]

2 minutes ago, NeutralBurn.3829 said:

I have no idea what "gid gud" is.

I don't think that players that are vocally toxic in game represent the majority of a specific group of players. But, with the release of this meta, there does seem to be a much deeper line drawn between the more casual players, and other players complaining that those casual players are not up to some kind of standard. Their builds are weak. Their play style is bad, wrong, broken,  etc and so forth.

It's a group event, but nearly every group I've been in....once it fails, it turns into players blaming each other for the fail. And a lot of obscenity. I don't see this nearly as often in other metas that fail.

People consider lots of different things fun. For some, it's fashion wars. For some, it's every achievement possible. But players shouldn't be hearing that they're playing the game wrong.

Well, the other side of hardcores are the ones silently pissed at the devs, because we're used to being able to share those public meta events and enjoy it. We know we're doing significantly more dps, we know sometimes we have to tell people mechanics like "we need to kill them simultaneously", we know we need to pull out the commander tag and such, and most of us are completely fine doing it. We're fine going mid to kill the boss in Dragon's Stand, we're fine using builds that will massively increase the squad's survival rate. It's all good, because it works out to a win, and it's gratifying to be able to share that content with anyone.

I'm not fine having to join an optimized squad in LFG an hour in advance, having to force a new map just for us and having to tell everyone else to try and optimize as much as I enjoy doing it when it's supposed to be content you can randomly stumble upon.

[Stelawrat.6589]

15 hours ago, Cronospere.8143 said:

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. 

Re: your opinion, so damage to the boss tail doesn't reduce the boss health? 

If so, is damaging the boss tail required to complete some other mechanic? 

Is there any advantage to totally ignoring the tail? or that's just not possible? 

Don't be shy to say if these are dumb questions. I won't break. 🙃

Edit 4 hours later: So guys, these are dumb questions then right? Don't be shy! I can take it. 

Edited March 10, 2022 by Stelawrat.6589

[Hadi.6025]

The thing that upsets me about turtle mount is that it doesn't do anything special.. I unlocked all the upgrades but they're only for passenger seat only? What? So not only can i not use the cannons... i cant even use the other skills that i unlocked ? I'm better off using skyscale. Turtle mount IS useless. 

Edited March 10, 2022 by Hadi.6025

[curtegg.5216]

Just participated with a squad of mostly half that never did it before and without a commander.  They actually got the boss down in the 20s before it timed out.  I saw in map chat a lot of the new ones say, "Well, I'll never do that again."  

 

Yep, this meta will not be long for participation.

[LAZ.2740]

I am a casual and this is my first time posting on this forum because I've never had concerns over the game and my enjoyment of it, until now.
I don't do fractals, I don't do raids, and I don't care to git gud.
I'm here for the grandiose, sprawling environments and to collect new mounts or abilities that make traversing the world more fun.
I like to collect things and have a cool looking character and I don't mind putting time in to get what I want, because those things are "extra". As in I was never gatekept out of systems. It took a while until I had my first legendary weapon, but I wouldn't say the game requires that, and no part of the progression is locked behind having one (and that's a good design philosophy).

So let me tell you how this expansion played out for my friends and I, who are all ostensibly "casuals" where I am probably the least of the group. I kept up with updates, so when the expansion came out I was the first of us to purchase and start playing it and I told my friends to come have a good time. Which we all did and we were all anxious to start working towards the highlight of the entire expansion: the turtle mount. Here we are, at dragon's end, I still don't have access to the turtle mastery track, and my friends (who trail my progress by roughly a map) are starting to wonder, when?
So I start looking at resources and it turns out I have to beat a meta, ok fine. So I do the meta, I follow the instructions of the commander and die once at the start not knowing the mechanics, but overall I did pretty good, largely because of the great shot calling.
 

2 hours of that and we fail, obviously. Okay, maybe it was a fluke and our team was bad right? So I do another 10 of so of these metas over a week, all of them fails, and as far as I can see, it doesn't matter how good I play or how great the commander is.
No matter what, there's people in the map who get dragged into it who were just doing quests or fishing, or whatever it may be.
Every time we fail, we have to wait two hours and by the time that happens, it's a new group of people who may (or may not) know the mechanics of the fight. One time we have a ragtag team with super low dps, but we get lucky with the rng and get the boss down to 20%. The next time, we have maybe 4-5x the dps but the boss never gives us more than 4-5 seconds of uninterrupted damage, and she spams tail the whole fight. We failed that one at 40%. How? Why?

But more to the point: Why is this even a requirement to start progressing on the highlight of the expansion?
Have the fight be a super difficult thing so raiders can tap themselves on the back for beating it, but after telling my friends what's required of them, they stopped playing.
To be honest, I'm just done at this point, all of my map progressions are 100%, I have all the mastery points.
So I'm just wasting time until I get the track unlocked, and I have no way to speed this up because I have no control over who and what happens during the meta.

Also what's the deal with the entire world hanging in balance but right in the middle of a battle to the death, the boss just leaves cause you didn't pass the dps check? That's not thematically or logically satisfying.

This is a long one, props to whoever reads it. That's my 2cents~

[NeutralBurn.3829]

7 minutes ago, Hauwlyn.8051 said:

Well, the other side of hardcores are the ones silently pissed at the devs, because we're used to being able to share those public meta events and enjoy it. We know we're doing significantly more dps, we know sometimes we have to tell people mechanics like "we need to kill them simultaneously", we know we need to pull out the commander tag and such, and most of us are completely fine doing it. We're fine going mid to kill the boss in Dragon's Stand, we're fine using builds that will massively increase the squad's survival rate. It's all good, because it works out to a win, and it's gratifying to be able to share that content with anyone.

Ah, I understand you now.

To clarify my answer, I don't think that the hardcore players are inherently toxic. I think that the structure of this meta has created a lot of it, by deepening that line between the two that I mentioned. Then frustration results, and some players express that with hostility and toxicity. But this situation comes from ANets side, not normal(hardcore, casual or otherwise) player demographic.

"I'm not fine having to join an optimized squad in LFG an hour in advance, having to force a new map just for us and having to tell everyone else to try and optimize as much as I enjoy doing it when it's supposed to be content you can randomly stumble upon." -- 100% agree with you.

Edited March 10, 2022 by NeutralBurn.3829

[Nasbit.3240]

16 hours ago, Josh Davis.7865 said:

We're investigating this. Ultimately, we want the End of Dragons metas to be a staple of the endgame open world experience, like the Heart of Thorns metas. We'll be taking the first step towards addressing this in the March 15 build.

 

 

Just an idea, but how about adding 0, 1 or 2 (extremely rare 5) Antique Summoning Stones to the lootpool (per run)
So you either wait 20 weeks for an legy, spend lot of gold for it or grind new meta to get it. 

[yoni.7015]

3 minutes ago, Nasbit.3240 said:

Just an idea, but how about adding 0, 1 or 2 (extremely rare 5) Antique Summoning Stones to the lootpool (per run)
So you either wait 20 weeks for an legy, spend lot of gold for it or grind new meta to get it. 

That’s actually a really good idea. 

[Xorthos.6947]

I will say this, after 24 failures, unless they add something fantastic to the loot table, I'll never step foot in Dragon's End again after I buy my egg later this week.  Let this meta die like half of the Path of Fire metas.

Wasting 2 hours to continuously fail due to RNG is not enjoyable, it's not fun, and it will kill this zone.

Edited March 10, 2022 by Xorthos.6947

[LAZ.2740]

2 minutes ago, Xorthos.6947 said:

I will say this, after 24 failures, unless they add something fantastic to the loot table, I'll never step foot in Dragon's End again after I buy my egg later this week.  Let this meta die like half of the Path of Fire metas.

Did they mention they would be tradeable? I didn't see that 😮

[Xorthos.6947]

Just now, LAZ.2740 said:

Did they mention they would be tradeable? I didn't see that 😮

They're gonna let you buy the egg for 200 writs, which I can already afford multiple times over with the repeat failures.

Edited March 10, 2022 by Xorthos.6947

[Zok.4956]

18 minutes ago, Hadi.6025 said:

The thing that upsets me about turtle mount is that it doesn't do anything special.. I unlocked all the upgrades but they're only for passenger seat only? What? So not only can i not use the cannons... i cant even use the other skills that i unlocked ? I'm better off using skyscale. Turtle mount IS useless. 

Yeah, its kind of boring for the driver. That was my feedback from the Beta. The most useful thing from the turtle is the last mastery: "Your turtles health boost will now be applied to all other mounts".

[LAZ.2740]

2 minutes ago, Xorthos.6947 said:

They're gonna let you buy the egg for 200 writs, which I can already afford multiple times over with the repeat failures.

Crap ok, I've been using all of them for imperial favors. Thank you ! Guess I'll start to stack on those 🙂
If this is real then my whole rant is null, as long as there's a way to get the turtle some way that isn't just luck, I'm happy. 

Edited March 10, 2022 by LAZ.2740