Upcoming Changes to "The Battle For The Jade Sea"

[Zok.4956]

21 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.

Yeah, this map meta finale is epic in a way. It's an epic fail.

It is a good idea to have a 50-player raid as some form of ultimate challenge. It could also be a big selling point for some customers. But you did not advertise/announce this. Why not? 

About the turtle: You could also advertised/announced this as "the ultimate, prestige mount that only players can get which are successful in the ultimate 50 player open world raid challenge". But you did not advertise the turtle this way. Again, why not?

Put this 50-player raid in an instance and don't lock the turtle behind it. This way the "casuals" and the "raiders" and the "try hards" and the "elitists" etc. do not have to play the same content together. If you try to mix these groups in a challenging 50-player raid (because it is an open world map meta and the turtle is locked behind this 50+ raid encounter) you will get the frustration and anger and toxicity that is happen right now. Who really thought at Anet, that this would be a good idea?

And: You actually do not value the time of your customers with this open world raid! In an instance like a raid we can just "/gg" to restart the fight immediately if we screw up. Thats how wiping and learning a fight is fun. We can focus on the fight that matters. But after a fail to be only allowed to try again after several hours of boring busy work (pre events are boring if they are done too often and not challenging) and waiting is just bad design.

[Joraan Adenard.2061]

I am glad for the changes and I completely agree with the direction you're taking with that event. It HAS to be challenging, while still accessible, and should have enough leeway to allow a few new/inexperienced players in without punishing the whole group.

 

That said, what's disheartening is that, in the event of a fail, you've wasted 2 hours of your time with no power over it. If the chance of failure is high, you should have at least some reward for sticking with the group during the whole thing. Doing the pre-events should be rewarding (not only with a personal buff), like in Dragon's Stand (where you get loot and mats throughout the meta event, not only after killing the boss).

 

I absolutely loved fighting Soo-Won but after completing it, I'm not very motivated to do it again if there's a good chance it fails as it will feel like time wasted. I won't be alone with that sentiment considering that anything in the game stops being pure fun after repeating it a few times. It needs appropriate rewards to warrant being repeated many times in the next few years, or else the map is just gonna become empty as veterans get their clear.

Edited March 5, 2022 by Joraan Adenard.2061

[lissiandra.1357]

7 minutes ago, Zok.4956 said:

And: You actually do not value the time of your customers with this open world raid! In an instance like a raid we can just "/gg" to restart the fight immediately if we screw up. Thats how wiping and learning a fight is fun. We can focus on the fight that matters. But after a fail to be only allowed to try again after several hours of boring busy work (pre events are boring if they are done too often and not challenging) and waiting is just bad design.

yeah lol resetting dhuum from ritual feels bad enough, imagine if you had to run through all of wing 5 every time you wiped, cus that is exactly what retrying this meta feels like

[Widowmaker Z.4802]

2 hours ago, difens.1326 said:

I'll be blunt: ANet - if you wish to make ANY money off turtle skins, you guys better work on alternative ways for unlocking the turtle (and yes, remove that strike mission requirement too). Leave the meta as it is, hardcores and raiders can farm it all day, I don't care. Also, don't forget to adjust the mount, so it's actually usable in open world by a single person.

This is the best option, remove unlocking the turtle from behind the meta event and leave the event as it is. I could care less about the event at this point and if I ever run it again, and all these so called elite players can have their hardcore meta event. We'll see how long is takes before it's a dead map.

 

Good point about the skins, if they want to make money off them, then they need to get the mount into the hands of the people who will buy them. If they leave it as it is, then they can explain to NCSoft why they aren't making as much off the new turtle skins when they do come out.

 

Yea, I'm not looking forward to having to run the strike either, well that's if I ever get the egg.

[kaesebrezen.3104]

I went through some videos to get a picture of how attack patterns can impact kill time... and it doesn't look good. It's very likely a variance of two, three, four, maybe even 5 additional minutes if you get extremely unlucky.

 

The primary offender is one single mechanic: the side swap of the boss, as each swap usually takes 10 seconds to complete, and wipes conditions/buffs from the boss and your party.

 

For reference the thread: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/109710-an-analysis-of-jade-sea-meta-attack-patterns-and-phase-duration/?tab=comments#comment-1586649

 

[NickChabby.8907]

22 minutes ago, Zok.4956 said:

About the turtle: You could also advertised/announced this as "the ultimate, prestige mount that only players can get which are successful in the ultimate 50 player open world raid challenge". But you did not advertise the turtle this way. Again, why not?

They even said the turtle would be easier to get than the skyscale lmao. Not really, all things considered now.

Yeah the Skyscale was annoying with its timegate and grind but at least I was able to start working on it the day it launched and keep steady progression every day, by myself. It's going to be a week since EoD launched soon and I still don't have the collection unlocked beceause it's gated behind this ULTRA HIGH spike of difficulty out of nowhere.

I'd take Skyscale 2.0 before any of this.

Edited March 5, 2022 by NickChabby.8907

[StarXII.9273]

30 minutes ago, Zok.4956 said:

Yeah, this map meta finale is epic in a way. It's an epic fail.

It is a good idea to have a 50-player raid as some form of ultimate challenge. It could also be a big selling point for some customers. But you did not advertise/announce this. Why not? 

About the turtle: You could also advertised/announced this as "the ultimate, prestige mount that only players can get which are successful in the ultimate 50 player open world raid challenge". But you did not advertise the turtle this way. Again, why not?

Put this 50-player raid in an instance and don't lock the turtle behind it. This way the "casuals" and the "raiders" and the "try hards" and the "elitists" etc. do not have to play the same content together. If you try to mix these groups in a challenging 50-player raid (because it is an open world map meta and the turtle is locked behind this 50+ raid encounter) you will get the frustration and anger and toxicity that is happen right now. Who really thought at Anet, that this would be a good idea?

And: You actually do not value the time of your customers with this open world raid! In an instance like a raid we can just "/gg" to restart the fight immediately if we screw up. Thats how wiping and learning a fight is fun. We can focus on the fight that matters. But after a fail to be only allowed to try again after several hours of boring busy work (pre events are boring if they are done too often and not challenging) and waiting is just bad design.

I would say its probably to late to reverse the way it is, so I'm mostly hoping for them to add a 2nd alternative rather than an outright rework of the entire map. They also benefit for not having to pick a side and can just give both of us what we want while sticking to the meat of their original idea.

[Sobx.1758]

18 hours ago, Firebeard.1746 said:

All of the "entry" level content in this expansion doesn't feel that way at all.

Because EoD is not "entry level content", core is. Even if there's explanation/reminder of the needed mechanics in the initial expansion zone, it still doesn't make it entry level.

Edited March 5, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

I thought the small raid player base despite the hard pushes all around taught ANET a lesson.

I was wrong.

Lets face it, organized squads with 'meta builds only' are a bad thing to be necessary. This needs to be fixed. 

Which means: no stupid mechanics and more time.

Or just give turtle to everyone who finished story. As it should be.

[Arthon.5394]

Yeah... Have made 3 full attempts so far and I can see this is problematic.

 

I understand wanting a challenge, but there has to be a balance between challenge and accessibility. There shouldn't be such a requirement of optimization some are doing (such as inviting only meta classes and a personal check before jumping into a new map or treating it like a raid) to have it succeed. Because ideally - as a concept - the whole 1h30 preparation should be the sort of benefit to guarantee its success, yet it poses more of  a requirement at the moment.

 

Now, I appreciate changes being made in order to not dilute the challenge aspect - extending the timer for 10mins, for example - because the event is fun in general terms (the last steps/Soo-Won) and the mechanics on their own are complementary to the encounter. But the changes barely did anything for the groups I've been in.

 

That tail is a problem. The  last 2 tries I've done - post adjustments - we've had the typical kittened up moment where we break the defiance bar and she does a tail mechanic, having both the shield and the debuff together. This NEEDS to be fixed. We can't have such a high requirement fight dependant on luck or this kind f of RNG. Like someone said before, this is not a case of "we fail, we try again" but an event that cycles through every single step for 2 kittening hours.

Edit: Also the whirlwinds. It's just an idiotic bait. The current way to do it is to completely ignore them and let people die. But it's there with a defiance bar that the common player joining the encounter tries to break - they see a caught player and try to help, like the bubbles.. I don't really understand the point of it. Rather have them immune to any sort of engagement and just kill the caught players in 5 secs. It shouldn't be a point of confusion like it is.

This is an interesting event as a concept, but the design is heavily flawed. And while you want to be conservative with the changes, people are getting further and further away of wanting to be involved in this meta. I do wonder how this event is going to turn out once most got their turtles and refuse to redo it.

Edited March 5, 2022 by Everwyn.8537

[KinngRynn.1209]

haven't been able to try the meta more than about three times now
i think the tail's health should somehow be tied to soo-won's health, alternatively if you wanted the tail to cut into dps somehow, maybe tune it so a group of 15-20 splitting off was enough.
if the whirlpools are intended to be broken, then maybe tune them so 2-3 electromagical pulses break them. i doubt they're filling their intended roll by players just killing themselves to respawn and get back into the fight.
 

Quote

21 hours ago, Alcatraznc.3869 said:

These changes are not bad but it is still vulnerable to troll and grief. I still believe these changes should be applied :

-a minimum treshold for the wisp : you want us to do the wisp and the wisp is a potential griefing tool. The easiest fix would be that everyone is turned into a wisp and as long as X players manages to get on top, everyone gets back to their body and the event continue. That way troll will no longer impact the success rate that much and new player can learn the mecanic without being flamed in chat. 

-tail should deal damage to the boss. As for right now it is silly that you cannot skip the tail part, it keeps moving back and forth AND all the DPS you do there doesnt impact the boss HP. Breaking the tail should remove a small % of the boss HP

-a bit more time: the boss is filled with a lot of mecanic with some requiring more time than other. I dont think adding 10 more min for instance would drastically make the boss easier.

 

^ I think all those changes would help quite a bit
soo-won's side switch atleast needs to be predictable. It's a real pain when you think she'll sit still so you pop your buffs and she decides to switch again 

I want this meta to be challenging, but I think most of us don't consider being at the mercy of RNG a challenge, it's just frustrating.

Edited March 5, 2022 by KinngRynn.1209
clarity, addition

[anzenketh.3759]

This is Tequatl the Sunless all over again only worse. First you have to fight the Metaservers and playing the LFG game to join a server where they are going to be doing the Pre-Events. Then you spend a hour and a half doing the pre-events. Then you get to the final event only to have it be extremely difficult to beat with little to no reward for all that preparation.

 

My main feedback is this is a RAID level difficulty for a group of randoms being a requirement to start the Siege Turtle collection. I think a alternative method to get the Siege Turtle Collection would benefit a lot of players. Then to keep the reward high for those that still wish to put forth the effort replace the Siege Turtle Collection with another reward. Perhaps.

 

I am not calling for massive changes It should be hard. Others have given great feedback. THe difficulty should be the event in of itself. Not difficulty of time requirement, LFG Games, preparation etc. The event itself is fun. I was part of a typical per-prepared full 50 man squad. We still failed. Perhaps extending the timer would be sufficient. It may only require about 5 minutes extension.

Edited March 5, 2022 by anzenketh.3759

[Palador.2170]

4 hours ago, difens.1326 said:

I'll be blunt: ANet - if you wish to make ANY money off turtle skins, you guys better work on alternative ways for unlocking the turtle (and yes, remove that strike mission requirement too). 

Good point. No turtle, no need for fancy turtle skins. Thus, no need to buy them.

 

Also, I want to add that I still need to harvest jade for my jade bot cores and such. So I'll be running around that map on various characters. Does that mean that I'll possibly get into an instance where someone's trying to carefully set up to take on the meta? It's bound to happen eventually, right? Will I care? Nope. I'll just be playing the game as intended, and if that's in direct conflict with other people ALSO playing the game as intended, I'd call that a design problem.

[Jeanluc.5870]

 

Quote

Good point. No turtle, no need for fancy turtle skins. Thus, no need to buy them.

 

Also, I want to add that I still need to harvest jade for my jade bot cores and such. So I'll be running around that map on various characters. Does that mean that I'll possibly get into an instance where someone's trying to carefully set up to take on the meta? It's bound to happen eventually, right? Will I care? Nope. I'll just be playing the game as intended, and if that's in direct conflict with other people ALSO playing the game as intended, I'd call that a design problem.

Hey, look on the bright side; if you time it right you can make a some extra money! When you are paid to leave the map! 

Edited March 5, 2022 by Jeanluc.5870

[dly.2485]

1 minute ago, Jeanluc.5870 said:

 

Hey, look on the bright side; if you time it right you can make a some extra money! When you are paid to leave the map! 

I might tag up with the description "Trolling, 10g to leave the map" and see how many people pay me

[Labjax.2465]

7 hours ago, Darklord Roy.2514 said:

Wow, it's really mind boggling to see the sheer number of people on here doing nothing but complaining and griping. Yes, the meta is one of the most challenging they have made to date, but it's also overall a wonderfully designed experience that just needs a bit of tweaking.

 

Also, do you people not realize the expac has been live for literally 5 days at this point? It's been less than a week and most people on this thread are crying like it's the end of the world and that they aren't getting what they paid for and blah blah, ad infinitum.

 

There are ALWAYS bound to be over/undertuned bits of content at the release of an expansion. That is just how gaming works, no online game launch in history has been completely perfect and free of issues from day 1. A lot of you need to drop your unrealistic first week expectations, give Anet a little bit of time to fix some things (they're already clearly working on it!) and enjoy the content based on more than just 1 meta event. It WILL get better.

I have seen two repeating issues shared in this thread: People being mislead about the mount (told it would be easier to obtain) and being destroyed by the whims of RNG when doing the meta. Neither of these qualify as "over/undertuned" issues with the release of something new. The first one is a straight up communication problem, if not a lie, and the second is poor design choice. Both of those problems were easily avoidable. This is not high expectations. People paid for a product.

[chronometria.3708]

I tried this after the changes and the biggest problem is - We always get the breakbar, but soo-won then changes position, goes to the tail or otherwise stops us from hitting her. With the first breakbar, every group i have seen immediately gets her to 80 percent, but all the other breakbars dont allow any sort of attack time - they may as well not exist. That is when they actually do appear and it doesnt decide to trigger one of the other events.

 

With mordremoth, the minor events deal damage to the mouth - yet these events just kill time and act as a roadblock. Add damage to completing the tails or minor bosses and the battle would work a lot better.

[Albadaran.1283]

I've played the game from the beginning but I never bothered to do research or make special builds for meta. Just ran along with the mob, doing some damage now and than and hoping I could survive until the end.

Storylines I mostly did solo, or with help from 1 or 2 friends.

Sounds this one is too hectic for me 😕 

But than I don't really need that mount 😉 

[OneAutumnLeaf.3915]

9% fail on this try due the rng being a hoe 3 times cc bar pops in a row on tail phase and ofc didn't make it

Edited March 5, 2022 by OneAutumnLeaf.3915

[Kaliwenda.3428]

19 minutes ago, Albadaran.1283 said:

I've played the game from the beginning but I never bothered to do research or make special builds for meta. Just ran along with the mob, doing some damage now and than and hoping I could survive until the end.

Storylines I mostly did solo, or with help from 1 or 2 friends.

Sounds this one is too hectic for me 😕 

But than I don't really need that mount 😉 

This is pretty much what I was coming here to say.  I did the whole rest of the story solo.

I don't care about the turtle but I do want to finish the story and see this fight.

By the time I get there, it could be that more changes are made.

The feedback so far makes me really not want to even try it now.

Not because of the difficulty, but because it seems like a real time sink, with a much higher chance of failure than of success.  I will do my best and read up beforehand but it sounds like a really frustrating experience overall.

[KurokouNekoki.7891]

32 minutes ago, Labjax.2465 said:

I have seen two repeating issues shared in this thread: People being mislead about the mount (told it would be easier to obtain) and being destroyed by the whims of RNG when doing the meta. Neither of these qualify as "over/undertuned" issues with the release of something new. The first one is a straight up communication problem, if not a lie, and the second is poor design choice. Both of those problems were easily avoidable. This is not high expectations. People paid for a product.

This statement was written by PC Gamer btw...
So here you go, another company to not trust on words alone!

[Minjin.8259]

12 hours 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.

This!  I just did it for the 10th time with a fail.  A few minutes more and we would have had it, because once again bad RNG.  So 10 hours of my life with no reward that I paid money to do...

[Minjin.8259]

8 minutes ago, OneAutumnLeaf.3915 said:

9% fail on this try due the rng being a hoe 3 times cc bar pops in a row on tail phase and ofc didn't make it

Yup I was in that fight too...I am so tired of it.

[Kasima.8143]

Quote

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.

So what mechanic exactly is in place to prevent 1 person from ruining that phase?

[OneAutumnLeaf.3915]

5 minutes ago, Minjin.8259 said:

Yup I was in that fight too...I am so tired of it.

And the DPS we had was good first wisp part around 2min into the fight.. but noo rng will is the biggest factor for this. I have a bigger chance solo caping smc of mag then having a normal rng -.-