Upcoming Changes to "The Battle For The Jade Sea"

[Shadowmoon.7986]

1 minute ago, Vlad Morbius.1759 said:

If it doesn't automatically drop after completing the content it's RNG so go away.

The turtle eggs drop 100% if you complete the event. This post has nothing to do with droprates. 

[lissiandra.1357]

So the real problem with this fight still isn't the wisps, it's the complete boss RNG. Sometimes, we get *one* breakbar the entire time before she just decides to dash under the platform three times in a row, basically wasting any chance the map had of clearing. I'm hoping the last point addresses this issue, but the fact that the boss has RNG on attacks making for extremely inconsistent clear is the biggest issue. I had a map where we were close to killing, but because of bad dash rng into tail timing, we got to DPS a whole 10 seconds of the last 20% before the fight timed out.

 

Few other bosses have this same type of RNG, Mordremoth has a consistent attack pattern (he will always attack an island, if not one burned, he always has a burn window after a fake burn, champs, etc I don't have this memorised lol), so does Tequatl/Triple Trouble/etc where they *always* have breakbars at x%, consistent burn windows, etc. Soowon can dash under the platform back-to-back and is basically unhittable the entire time.

 

Again, really hoping the last point addresses the issue, if it does the entire fight would be a lot more doable.

Edited March 4, 2022 by lissiandra.1357

[DaKine.2694]

9 minutes ago, CasualElitist.8795 said:

They can kick you from squad but you can still remain on the same map, so it shouldn't make any difference to you, no?

No, we didn’t all go into a map until we had 10 subgroups with quick+alac+3 dps. Then once everyone was sorted, we rushed into an empty map.

[ribchop.1736]

1 minute ago, DaKine.2694 said:

No, we didn’t all go into a map until we had 10 subgroups with quick+alac+3 dps. Then once everyone was sorted, we rushed into an empty map.

I've not seen a single one of these in all 16 runs I've done, the only time I've seen this is when MightyTeapot's guild did this - your experience is not everyone's. You can win this fight no matter what classes with sub-optimal DPS and CCs, you just need a lil coordination. If you don't like loosing start running and explaining the mechanics to the new people. You'll find more and more runs get closer to passing.

[DaKine.2694]

2 minutes ago, ribchop.1736 said:

I've not seen a single one of these in all 16 runs I've done, the only time I've seen this is when MightyTeapot's guild did this - your experience is not everyone's. You can win this fight no matter what classes with sub-optimal DPS and CCs, you just need a lil coordination. If you don't like loosing start running and explaining the mechanics to the new people. You'll find more and more runs get closer to passing.

My experience at this point is around 11 attempts, so I’d say I have a decent enough sample size to make an assertion. I’ve also been in a lot of groups with more than “a lil coordination” and they fail because of griefers or non-English speakers that can’t understand any instructions. Every run I’ve done has had more than enough explanation given but people don’t listen or can’t understand. The power of one person to be able to grief an event, resulting in a 2 hour time waste for all of those 50+ people is insane.

[Spyritdragon.6048]

I'm super loving the sound of this. Let me definitely say that I am so, so in love with having another big, difficult and challenging meta encounter that takes effort and dedication to defeat, and I'm really happy to see that it's being addressed by making the mechanics more intuitive and work out better rather than making the overall boss easier.  

 

Definitely optimistic to see it remain a challenging but doable end-game open world fight!

[HumanComplex.1648]

they've rid us of the dish-dash flim-flam. we good fam.

[CasualElitist.8795]

29 minutes ago, DaKine.2694 said:

No, we didn’t all go into a map until we had 10 subgroups with quick+alac+3 dps. Then once everyone was sorted, we rushed into an empty map.

Ah okay, didn't think about that.

Well commanders should just explain to people what to do instead of believing that gatekeeping will make the meta succeed. Unless they themselves don't know what to do and just think that having exp raiders or specific roles will help them. Sad to see that. But I also kinda get that knowing how some people just don't listen to commands or never read chat.

Edited March 4, 2022 by CasualElitist.8795

[DaKine.2694]

1 minute ago, CasualElitist.8795 said:

Ah okay, didn't think about that.

Well commanders should just explain to people what to do instead of believing that gatekeeping will make the meta succeed. Unless they themselves don't know what to do and just think that having exp raiders or specific roles will help them. Sad to see that.

Yeah, I agree that it’s sad, definitely. I would like to see everyone running around on the siege turtles but sadly that’s just how it is right now. 

It started out of necessity though because many people have spent 20+ hours of their life trying to do this meta but keep failing it because of things outside their control (ie other players that don’t listen or don’t speak English).

[Phasma Phasmatis.4305]

"To accompany this change, the time to complete this phase has been reduced from 120 seconds to 75 seconds. "

This should help with the people who grab a wisp and troll at the bottom refusing to do the mechanic at least. We won't loose a full 4 mins anymore.

[SlothPowah.1072]

These are very good changes that will reward successful completion of mechanics and reduce frustration over animation locks without removing the actual challenge of the meta. Should be much more reasonable to clear once these changes ship.

[Jademalo.3724]

I am extremely disappointed to see these as the proposed changes.

I've run the meta in the high double digits now, 4 times with fully meta groups communicating over discord, and 6 other times without mechanical or execution issues within the group. The reason we failed those attempts had nothing to do with a lack of coordination or damage, and has absolutely not been addressed with the proposed changes.

 

The core issue is the massive amount of variance between attack patterns she can give. The issue isn't the dps players are contributing, the issue is the time you have available where you can actively damage her to make progress on the fight.

If she decides to spam swaps or tails, no matter how good your dps is you're still not going to have enough active dps time to actually kill her. I've had runs with 9+ total tails without a single breakbar, and multiple where the breakbar has come so late she phases before it can be used.

With the proposed changes, a breakbar is a guaranteed instant phase. Instead of lowering the rng elements of the fight and promoting coordination and skill, we've now got a situation where it's even swingier - where you can get lucky with an early phase breakbar and basically just skip a phase.

If you watch MightyTeapot's kill video which many cite as evidence she isn't that bad, you can see that they had 3 breakbars, 5 swaps, and one tail phase that was so late into a damage phase it could be ignored. This isn't average luck, this is exceptional luck.

The changes to the green phase are at least a step in the right direction, but since raw dps really isn't the issue, giving everyone a temporary dps buff solves a problem that doesn't really exist.

 

There needs to be a more consistent rhythm to the abilities. It doesn't matter if that's achieved with tail phases being set to specific health breakpoints or if there are internal cooldowns on certain fight lengthening abilities, the fact that you can either have it handed on a silver platter with breakbars early or have it be borderline unwinnable with a chain of back to back swaps and tail phases isn't fun design that promotes coordination and good play.

 

 

Edited March 4, 2022 by Jademalo.3724

[Tuna Bandit.3786]

Thank you, that will hopefully stop the hate mail and whispers. 

I play the game to have fun, and not to report players for (falsely) accusing me of borking the meta.

The amount of abuse reports sent is sickening... the current state simply devides the player base and was extremely casual player unfriendly (and that is a mild expression)

After this update will try it again, before no... I am done be screamed and shout at... people always look for a scapegoat and I am not the only one that experienced a mentality that made us litterly X out of the game.

[PathWars.9746]

Hopefully people take this an opportunity to learn the mechanics and try again.

I love that it's really difficult.

It's a major gameplay moment, it should be super hard!

Do you wipe a lot to get it? Yeah.

In wow guilds can wipe dozens and dozens of times to hard content before clearing it.

That is what makes that content feel special, you know that you passed because of skill, game knowledge and buildcraft.

That is what makes it feel earned and special.

Edited March 4, 2022 by Time Travel Conundrums.2894

[Lord Trejgon.2809]

Personally the main thing I would like to see addressed in this fight is telegraphing of the "dps the tail" segment. The one and only run I have had at this event failed primarily because we lost too much time on not killing the tail while trying to smack the shielded dragon. I thought I was paying attention to the encounter, but most of the time I was myself very slow at switching the dps target.....

 

On a side note: Since I attempted the event myself only once, I cannot really comment on the issue of randomness of target's attack patterns and phases. I do agree that specific attacks and phases should happen at predetermined pattern, tied either to a time or hp % of the boss (or both).

EDIT: on a side note I am unsure about the decision to lock siege turtle mount behind that one.... maybe turtle should be unlocked via other means, and have meta event reward something else but also valuable?

Edited March 4, 2022 by Lord Trejgon.2809
misclick sending the post without finished sentence :)

[Runiir.6425]

1 minute ago, Time Travel Conundrums.2894 said:

Hopefully people take this an opportunity to learn the mechanics and try again.

I love that it's really difficult.

It's a major gameplay moment, it should be super hard!

Do you wipe a lot to get it? Yeah.

In wow guilds can wipe dozens and dozens of times to hard content before clearing it.

That is what makes that content feel special, you know that you passed because of skill, game knowledge and buildcraft.

That is what makes it feel earned and special.

 

That hard content the guild wipes on isn't a major expansion addition to the game. It is a raid, a totally optional element to the game. They don't make it so you can't swim underwater unless you get 49 other people to coordinate. The mount requires this meta, thus, grab 50 random people speaking 3 different languages that cannot understand each other, 20 of them are literally brand new to the game and only did EoD story. now GO. If it isn't completable by this ragtag group of total randoms with zero ways to communicate that isn't typing in game and language barriers, it is NOT the right content for the last meta required to get a heavily advertised mount! 

Want this endless complaint list to go away? Have them hand you an egg for being there at the beginning of the event. You get it win or lose. Congratulations you cut the griping of this whole thing by 75%.  

[Jademalo.3724]

1 minute ago, Ken Yuudachi.9807 said:

As I have seen so far, the deathes has decreased a lot, but it doesn't help the thing. People know the mechanic and where to go. Just not enough dps, totally not enough. It's not about experience, but if you're lucky enough to play with top players.

 

The issue isn't raw DPS, it's that some runs can have an abundance of tail phases or side swaps where you literally cannot damage her. If this happens a lot, the numbers in arc will naturally be lower.

 

You could easily kill the boss with ~8k dps to her face if she didn't constantly swap sides or require multiple tail kills.

[Cranberry.5849]

I do not think that a TWO HOUR long OPEN WORLD meta event should be challenging when you have no control over the players that you are playing with. And you need to start back another hour of pre event just to challenge it again if you fail.

 

If you want to make a challenging meta event than make it like Dragonstorm that only last around 20mins and people can make their own private instance!

Edited March 4, 2022 by Cranberry.5849

[Slobitsza.9302]

1 hour ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

We're monitoring completion rates very closely and are currently happy to see that successful clears are becoming more common as strategies evolve and players learn and master the encounter. Right now, we are not making any adjustments to the overall health of the boss. Instead, we are looking at ways to incentivize players to engage with and complete the encounters’ core mechanics.

Two points you guys are clearly missing:
- Successful clears will become more common since players are joining dedicated Discord Channels to complete the event. This has nothing to do with the player's ability or their knowledge and skill and those who finish the event will join the map only to farm mats or to "troll" or perhaps won't even bother with the event at all after they had successful run. On the topic of Discord Channels, why should players be forced to such steps to clear in-game content? You should maybe start monitoring the LFG since players have started putting LI requirements in order to join the squad... For open world content? What?
- You can try to incentivize players by adding a more rewarding experience even for the failed attempt. 14k XP is really a slap in the face after spending 2h for the Meta event preparing everything. I've personally taken a week off from work to enjoy the expansion and "enjoy I have" until I reached this map. Shame really since everything before this was really a blast.

And what others already mentioned, after you've nerfed almost everything that can be nerfed for Open World and you've made the majority of players auto-attack for the win, it's a tad bit too late to try to make this type of content where they have to actually know what they are doing.

[Chichimec.9364]

4 hours ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

...the encounter was designed from the start to be challenging, but progressively more doable as players learn mechanics and how to handle phase transitions...

 

It was really disheartening for me to hear you say this. I would hope that you and the other Anet folks remember that not all players want hard, challenging content, that not all of us are physically capable of "gitting gud". A number of times on this forum, including in my signature, I've alluded to being an old, slow player. Let me be a bit more specific now though. At age 73 I have emphysema, sleep apnea, and congestive heart failure. The combination of those things leaves me always tired, with very low energy levels. If most folks have energy levels around 10, mine are around 2, maybe 2 1/2 on a good day. Irl, I really do move slowly and sluggishly on the best days. My physical condition is such that the state would pay for me to live in a nursing home if I wanted. As I still have some limited mobility and would prefer to not go to a nursing home, my caseworker is currently trying to find a home health care aide who could do the cooking and cleaning for me as well as helping me with things as basic as getting in and out of the bathtub.

Now I realize that there are probably very few players in a situation like mine. Still, there are some number of players who do not want challenging content, nor do they want to be pressured into "gitting gud". Call these folks the casual players. At the same time, I realize that there are people who do want the hard, challenging content, folks who thrive on that kind of thing. Let's call them the hard core players. I've always thought the best strategy for Anet was to accommodate as many kinds of players as possible - to offer hard stuff for the hard core players as well as casual stuff for the casual players. That means not trying to force players into game modes or styles they don't like but instead, offering a range of options.

Last December I hit my fourth birthday in Tyria. It's the range of ingame options that has enabled me to play GW2 for that long. I never would have been able to finish the Return To stuff on my own because of the required jumping puzzles. Thanks to portals and friendly mesmers though, I was indeed able to get it all done. If there are story instances I can't complete, I can ask some of my guildies to run through it with me and that's how I've gotten through story stuff I never could have completed on my own. Raids are a game mode I'll probably never touch. Thanks to WvW though, even an old, slow player like me has been able to get two full sets of legendary gear - heavy & light - as well as almost half of the medium set. Those are all options which allow folks to play on the level they are comfortable with.

Now, I have no issues with Anet introducing hard content into the game. They need to do that to keep the hardcore players and we all need the hardcore players to help keep the game strong and thriving. It only becomes an issue when Anet tries to push all players into that hard content. A hard, challenging map meta? Fine, I don't have to do it if I don't want to. Except that, in this case, the siege turtle was one of the things that got me really excited about EoD. Except that, in this case, we were told getting the siege turtle would be about the same level of difficulty as getting the roller beetle. @Rubi Bayer.8493 I very much hope you and the rest of Anet hold true to what you say in this second quote.
 

Quote

...we look at further changes to the encounter or potentially offer alternative acquisition paths for the Siege Turtle collection...

Give people the option to play on the level they are comfortable with. That just seems like a better business strategy than pushing those of us who can't "git gud" out of the game.

Edited March 5, 2022 by Chichimec.9364

[Shadowmoon.7986]

19 minutes ago, Lord Trejgon.2809 said:

Personally the main thing I would like to see addressed in this fight is telegraphing of the "dps the tail" segment. The one and only run I have had at this event failed primarily because we lost too much time on not killing the tail while trying to smack the shielded dragon. I thought I was paying attention to the encounter, but most of the time I was myself very slow at switching the dps target.....

 

On a side note: Since I attempted the event myself only once, I cannot really comment on the issue of randomness of target's attack patterns and phases. I do agree that specific attacks and phases should happen at predetermined pattern, tied either to a time or hp % of the boss (or both).

EDIT: on a side note I am unsure about the decision to lock siege turtle mount behind that one.... maybe turtle should be unlocked via other means, and have meta event reward something else but also valuable?

There is an audio queue about her summoning bubbles, that happens prior to the bubble shield.

[StarPT.7431]

1 hour ago, interNerd.4908 said:

These changes are very welcome.

 

But I don't get how decisions are made within ArenaNet. The addon clearly targets new (unexperienced) players, because even though you can enter the addon only at level 80, you have to play a tutorial. So. Target group: New unexperienced players (aka. liquidity in business terms).

 

But yet, your very first sentence is "The Jade Sea meta was designed to be the ultimate open world finale, an epic conclusion to the 10-year Elder Dragon story arc.". This targets players that play Guild Wars 2 from day one. In my opinion, you have to decide which kind of player is targeted to complete the meta event. At the moment, the meta event is only doable with mainly the three meta classes. Any new player will not even know about these meta classes, but is expected to take part in a coordinated event with 49 other randoms. Seems kinda odd to me.

 

Although I do agree with you, I see commanders explaining mechanics every time and all the time. If a new player joins they just need to read and try to do the best they can to follow what the commander says despite being confused as kitten...that's always better than just ignore everyone and then mess it up for everyone.

[Erise.5614]

19 minutes ago, Time Travel Conundrums.2894 said:

Hopefully people take this an opportunity to learn the mechanics and try again.

I love that it's really difficult.

It's a major gameplay moment, it should be super hard!

Do you wipe a lot to get it? Yeah.

In wow guilds can wipe dozens and dozens of times to hard content before clearing it.

That is what makes that content feel special, you know that you passed because of skill, game knowledge and buildcraft.

That is what makes it feel earned and special.

If it was at least about your personal accomplishment. But it really isn't. Open world metas don't work that way.

Frankly, this sounds exactly like EA telling us why BattleFront 2 has a fantastic unlock structure^^

All about that pride and accomplishment! After all, there's no way to be happy with a two person mount unless you had to fight tooth and nails for 20+ hours to even get the privilege of starting to work towards unlocking it! 

 

[Lord Trejgon.2809]

4 minutes ago, Shadowmoon.7986 said:

There is an audio queue about her summoning bubbles, that happens prior to the bubble shield.

there is a hectic crapload of audio going on in that meta tho....

[BATMAN.6794]

Personally I think the turtle mount shouldn't be locked behind a meta, you advertised turtle to sell the xpac and its locked behind an event that a lot of people wont ever be able to finish. I don't personally care how hard the meta is, I don't care if you kept the difficulty the same, the problem is that it is locked behind it. You should make it obtainable in another way anyways.