Upcoming Changes to "The Battle For The Jade Sea"

[Zephire.8049]

Attempt #24 failed because there was so much CC by ads in the final phase (after the 3-way split) that no one could land and start chaining stability in time then Soo-Won wiped the group with a combo of her tail and tsunami because people literally couldn't move and were scattered from the split and being knocked around.

I definitely think there's far too many adds for it. Or at least adds that CC. If a group has a lot of AOE cleave or epi, it's less of an issue, but it's not fun to lose control of your character for 7 seconds only to die because you couldn't move. Not to mention the visual noise and how if you have rendered models turned down, you can't even see the adds so have to go off red nameplate.

The scaling of this event is way off for open world content and I don't see people doing this once they can get the turtle through other means. It's not fun, takes forever, and the rewards are (I hear) pretty bad. I see it going the way of Serpent's Ire and Marionette 2.0 if changes aren't made ASAP to make it enjoyable to play and respectful of players' time.

[Stelawrat.6589]

4 hours ago, curtegg.5216 said:

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.

Still, gratz to you & to those that were with you, no commander & first timers, you can all feel pretty darn good about that. Maybe, just maybe, the devs have tweaked the RNG. 

[Seth Moonshadow.2710]

10 minutes ago, Stelawrat.6589 said:

"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. "

Yeah, this is where I've landed as well & I have a gut feeling, that the RNG component, is not only intentional, but is meant to be the incentive to keep players returning to challenge themselves against it.

May as well just have a slot machine next to the entrance, odds of winning are the same. 

RNG The GODs have spoken! You get.....nothing.

 

Okay so I am one to say I absolutely despise the RNG in this game. I feel it is a PERFECT force multiplier for Strikes/RAIDs/Fractals and other instanced based l33tz wanting a challenge! Back when rng was on drops my wife saw all manor of good loot. I on the other hand saw drops of white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, blue, white, white, white, white, white, blue, white, white, white, white, white, white, white. All the while she had an EXOTIC DROP BEFORE SHE COULD EVEN EQUIP IT! SRSLY!?!? though it was after her second exotic that I received my first green😶

 

Yes I agree the RNG should just leave Tyria as the Gods did, they left THAT one behind to F'with us!

[difens.1326]

Another attempt, another fail. What's the point of even breaking her bar, when 3 seconds after that she flips. Whether I do 30k DPS or 2k does not matter in such situation. Also, we got 2 or 3 cc phases when her tail was up. I am not trying this again, even if it gets nerfed to the ground. Well played anet.

[cubed.2853]

the randomness in it just doesn't work at all.... imho this is a good sample for flawed game design. 

[Stelawrat.6589]

5 hours ago, LAZ.2740 said:

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~

Don't worry about the "long one". The forum is full of them. 😋

Also, I'm really sorry for you & your friends. Maybe your friends can get a refund. It's worth a try to contact Customer Service. 

Edited March 10, 2022 by Stelawrat.6589

[difens.1326]

Grinding WvW for legendary armor is more fun than this failure of meta event

[subgenius.7649]

The buff for completing the events throughout the map. This buff is to make sure people do all the pre pre's to get all zones up to high and in doing so giving you at max a 20% dmg increase after having completed 10 events can take around 45 min. After this you then do another set of Pre's before the final fight starts about 30-45 min. The final fight then gives you another timer. The whole Pre Pre events seem super unnecessary.

 

 Get rid of the readiness to high and the need for that Buff altogether. People want to take a breather after having failed a few times in a day... so they want to go off and do something else. But if they do then they could possibly lose said buff, and then have to go back and try to farm up that buff again. Maybe they dont get on in time to fully get that 20% and they are then effectively worthless to the group so they then have to wait till the next go around other wise them and others like them are not contributing.  It almost feels like you have to be locked into that map once you start trying to get the meta complete.  I personally log out after a fail and do not play the game again until my Frustration level vs the ET board line up so that I don't loose said buff. I feel trapped. 

I do not like the fact that you can buy the Mount now. I never wanted that. I dont mind if it is locked behind the meta as long as said meta was more considerate of your time, for example. RNG/PREPRE/PRE/PUGS/NESSESARYBUFFS/VISUAL GRAPHIC VOMIT.

World Metas are fun and unique to this game. People Love them, Whether that be for farming or experiencing Big Boss fights in an alive world. In Raids you can just put up a LFG and only need 10 people that you can choose Instantly go in and try over and over. In Strikes the same thing, Instant Retry. So on and So on. This META says F* You to your time.  
 

[Stelawrat.6589]

4 hours ago, LAZ.2740 said:

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. 

It is real, effective 15th. March:

"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."

Edited March 10, 2022 by Stelawrat.6589

[Suranis.8279]

Have to admit I've been enjoying the map today and just doing events to get Writs of Dragons end and level up mastery XP. The Map is really pretty, and aside from the Soo-Won fight itself its got a lot of very fun and relaxing events, with some excellent voice acting. People were laughing about how the Jade Maw is a lot easier if they don't let people know its on, becasue of scaling.

As people are saying, Soo-Won itself is a load of RNG kitten, but frankly its the only part of the map that sucks. Which is kind of ironic in a "Sometimes Irony is really Ironic" kinda way.

So ya Anet, in my humble opinion. your slot machine end boss is the only part of your expansion that utterly sucks. It's really good right up to the point we ripcord up to that platform. The best way to enjoy it is just not do it.

Edited March 10, 2022 by Suranis.8279

[Stelawrat.6589]

3 hours ago, fourhim.3584 said:

Isn't there a very real possibility that all those who have tried and failed so many times will just use their stack of contracts to get the Turtle started, and then no one will be left attempting the Meta anymore?  I don't blame those folks - as someone who hasn't tried the meta once because of all I was hearing - I'd probably avoid it too.  I'm just wondering if people will still want to try the meta at that point, if they don't also bump the awards received.

It's a worry for a lot of players. You're not alone. 

[daninumbers.4036]

I had to leave a bit before the boss after almost 1 hour (real life comes first) but the squad I was with seemed good enough to clear it. No idea if they did.

 

So I forgot to mention one of the things they've said, that they are happy about the % of clears raising. Well, I hadn't tried for days till today after idk if 7 - 8 fails, surely more stopped trying after +20. If you rely on numbers pumped by people that already cleared it once and they are repeating it for the sake of pride or whatever other reason (not the rewards lol) using premade or raid squads, then those numbers aren't real. Basically saying that certain raid is doable by the entire community just because there is a dedicated group of people succeeding over and over again but no one else tries anymore.

A more real number could be the number of successful runs and how many new eggs were given, but still it could always be people carrying others (has anyone started to sell those runs yet like the fishing party buff?).

 

And again, challenging content is fine while it's optional and not a main feature locked behind it, but also when you have control over it. If in a 10 man squad our healer fails we can tell them how it could be improved. If you fail, that's on you. 50 people in a chaotic event with random classes and roles that changes every single time you repeat it can't be improved and you hardly can do anything to make up for a dozen people not meeting the higher requirements plus new players with a level 80 booster knowing nothing about mechanics that just needed a friend to play together to guide them to the map (or teleport). It was a series of unfortunate events.

 

The thing about leaving GW2 for Elden Ring sums up all this: you are killed 20 times in a row and (instantly) keep trying, you improve, you enjoy it even if you keep failing. Here you got nothing to do but tell the others what to do to play better, if they listen or simply are able to, there is a real person behind that charr there and probably has less fur irl but also has a minor disability that lets them play but not at hardcore level. You might be the very best player in this game and you can't carry the other 49 people singlehandely, that's the source of frustation and why we've been here for days asking for this mess to be looked into with little feedback.

 

It's not asking for free rewards, it's to stay consistent to what the rest of the game is and to keep pve as casual and strikes/raids as elite. Don't mix both or we get this, 42 pages of frustration and attacks to each other. This isn't the community I saw when I joined 7 years ago.

[Stelawrat.6589]

2 hours ago, Dinova.8597 said:

The only actual change i seen from previous world bosses to this one, is the INSANE amount of toxic behaviour in the chat. The easiest ones are just people dropping out close to the end and go 'lol fail again', to the point people are outright racist towards 'stupid noobs' that dont seem to quite understand the mechanics.

 

Once i was happy to see world/map events as a huge collective, a community sharing the same goal, helping eachother, healing and reviving others, but we got to a point where people dont even attack the bubble because 'use the stupid 1 you noob', or yell CC during that big wirlpool moment where half of the people either cant target or cant hit the boss. Yes, some people need more time to learn, some just 'trolling about', but do people really have to go that toxic to 'make their point'? If you are that dead serious about the game, or about 'putting down people on their failures', then dont come. You wont help people by calling them stupid, you wont get progression or alertness by calling them 'homosexuals' .

 

The NPC's (same with that fight in that jade quarry) shout stuff way to late (hide behind something - instant aoe), the targeting to the boss often gets stuck on the stupid ammount of adds and some aoe's are not even ground punches but more like a dome attack that even if you are flying above the dragon, its a instant kill.

 

The saddest post I've read about this whole crapola so far. It really makes you wonder how some people function irl. So idiotic, so senseless. I had no plans to try this any time soon & it's experiences like those described so far, that reinforces that decision 100%. 

For you Dinova! Peace! 🕊️

 

[Zaoda.1653]

8 hours ago, yann.1946 said:

The only thing these things have in common is the name. The chak egg sac is a sellable random drop while the turtle egg is a guaranteed one time unlock. 

 

It would be neat if the Dragon's End meta had something substantial like an infusion, for players to receive as a potential loot drop, just like how there's a chance at the chak egg sac from the chak meta.

 

Something like this, from "The Only One" EOD story (SPOILER'ish? I don't know).

 

https://ibb.co/3k1Wbmg

 

I took a screenshot of my character with this effect. It looks amazing. Looks similar to the poly reverberating infusion effect, only it is coloured white, and with nice glowing eyes - not the lame glowing eye skins which just basically look like dots in the eyes, no, this effect covers the WHOLE eyes (as it should) and looks epic. If this was an infusion, available as a drop from Dragon's End, that would be a bit of an incentive to keep coming back. Not necessarily enough of an incentive, but a decent start, towards giving the meta a good loot table like some of the other meta rewards.

[Nono.7963]

21 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.

 

 

Anet policy: rush changes first, think about it after

[NorthernRedStar.3054]

21 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.

 

 

Good communication on your part. Cheers.

[Zephire.8049]

At this point I've definitely had to come to terms with missing out on some achievements. I have more than enough writs to get the turtle on Tuesday and if it's so difficult to get into a map that wins despite the RNG now, it's going to be all the harder once the people attempting it stop unless significant changes are made. When people leave raid and fractal groups after a single wipe, why is it assumed people will throw another 2 hours at this after a wipe? I can't speak for everyone but after 2 hours I am done and want to do something else and have zero interest talking with 49 other people in what can change (if any) and then wait for another 2 hours for attempt #2.

And I'm someone who has the luxury of having enough time to go for multiple attempts in a row—if someone's play time is limited, it's wasted when it comes to DE.

[Zaoda.1653]

Yeah, 2 hours per attempt (most of the time, of which, are fails) is disheartening. It's definitely a morale killer.

[Tachenon.5270]

Another glorious fail. As before, pretty fun up until the Big Event. Whoever came up with that mess must have been in a hot tub at the time, sipping champagne, because that's pretty much the gist of it, whirlpools and bubbles and bubbles and whirlpools and so on and so forth et cetera et cetera ad infinitum. Gosh, what fun.

NOT.

Ah, well. At least I have pie. Pumpkin! But this is the last time I'll bake one without a crust.

[Vexona.6452]

10/March/22 2 PM PST/5 PM /EST Meta

We ended up with the right amount of tail and bites, with more handslams which is far more consistant with other metas: if you are'nt paying attention you will down , otherwise ride the wave. We were able to get to our platforms and use our donkeys on the mini bosses to break the bar and succeed in a win. If you have a way to data scrape your fights , that's the RNG we'd like to see. Two tails, three bites, a bunch of handslams and normal bubbles/whirlpools.

[Kaliwenda.3428]

I'm going to be a bundle of nerves the first time I step into this map. I hope I get one where people are explaining stuff.  I don't like feeling like I'm going to inadvertently mess it up for everyone.  Not a happy thought.

[Vexona.6452]

3 minutes ago, Kaliwenda.3428 said:

I'm going to be a bundle of nerves the first time I step into this map. I hope I get one where people are explaining stuff.  I don't like feeling like I'm going to inadvertently mess it up for everyone.  Not a happy thought.

I have a discord with a full guide for people to read and lead people each step of the way. If you send me an in-game mail I can link you to discord where you will be pinged when we go 🙂

[Kaliwenda.3428]

1 minute ago, Vexona.6452 said:

I have a discord with a full guide for people to read and lead people each step of the way. If you send me an in-game mail I can link you to discord where you will be pinged when we go 🙂

That's very kind, I've been reading your posts and I appreciate the way you're helping people.  Thank you!

[Vexona.6452]

1 minute ago, Kaliwenda.3428 said:

That's very kind, I've been reading your posts and I appreciate the way you're helping people.  Thank you!

I wanna be the Egg Giver >.> help me fulfil my secret dream!

[Coolster.2536]

Overall, I like the Dragon's End meta. It's very engaging and the spectacle is incredible. I don't think the Tail nerf was super necessary. The most annoying thing, to me, is when Soo-Won switches sides in the arena. Since she's essentially invulnerable during the animation, it's very annoying trying to keep the damage up. However, since the Tail comes up less often, it does mean we don't have to swap to Tail as often. It eases my issue with it a little, but the Tail wasn't my hang-up about the fight. I think the meta is largely fine as is, the only changes I would like to see are:

 

1) Better tells for when you're about to get Bubbled or Whirlpooled. Many times I feel like it just happens, but there are AoE's on the ground you're supposed to avoid. They just so happen to be the same type of AoE's that the million void mobs also spam. Very easy to tune out since the mobs aren't very deadly.

2) Nerf the breakbar on the Whirlpool. If the goal is for us to free our allies from Whirlpools, they're breakbar shouldn't be as big as it is. In every run I've been in, the commander says to let yourself die if you get whirlpooled because it'll take longer to save you than for you to die and respawn. That feels like not the intended way to deal with the mechanic.

3) Getting all Zones to High should trigger the escort. Dragon's Stand starts whenever you have 5 people in each lane, and I don't see why Dragon's End shouldn't be similar. In addition, the 20% damage and health buff should be for getting all zones to high and the 5% Damage vs Void should be for doing 10 events, imo. The extra chests can still be tied to doing 10 events, but because of how impactful the Dragon's End Contributor buff is, it should be tied to the zones rather than events.

 

I feel like the event fails because half the squad gets bubbled or whirlpooled, but I can't fault other players for missing the tells when even I can barely tell when it's going to happen. Just the $0.02 of a random casual who LFG'd Dragon's End 20 times and failed 19 of them.