ANET lost their way with Dragon's End META

[TheQuickFox.3826]

I tried this meta two times, but both times I lost all progression because I got teleported to a new map with zero progress.

[Astralporing.1957]

5 hours ago, TrueChaoticNeutral.5104 said:

I think this may be even worse than the Ascended gear reveal during the Karka event. It's nuts.

Oh, most certainly. After all, during the Ascended gear reveal the community was not really divided. Not many players tried to defend Anet then, and even those that did mainly did it by claiming that "it won't be that bad". Next to noone actually liked the idea of introducing a new gear tier.

[ugrakarma.9416]

On 3/5/2022 at 3:24 PM, fourhim.3584 said:

It seems they're catering now to the elite 5% of players who can actually complete these events with their fellow guildies, rather than casual players.  As a very casual player, I thought that's what raids, fractals, etc were for.  Just curious how they playtested this, both in house and if any playtesting with actual casual players occured at all.  Tell the 50 playtesters "OK, you have no idea what you're doing.  But listen to the Commander in chat.  Good luck."  And which playtesters told them that this 2 hour event is actually enjoyable?  And which playtesters said it was good to lock the Turtle Mount , WHICH PLAYED SO PROMINENTLY IN ALL PREVIEW CONTENT, behind this event?

 

I'm wondering now if they've basically got data somewhere showing that its the elite players who spend extra money in the store more than anyone else, so we need to keep them happy?  And by keeping them happy, I mean allowing them to show off their turtles in the game now, as if to say "Look what I and my buddies could accomplish that you can't!"  I thought that my son and I were spending a lot of money with all the mount skins, outfits, utilities and gold we've bought for the last 8 years, which has to be well over $500 now.  But I guess that's not enough?

yeah,,

 

the thing make non-sense, normally these DPS metrics followers guys are  very strict numbers, and when they spend money.

 

Casual are all about looks, and that why exists so many outfits in the gem store.

 

 

[Rauderi.8706]

There's a balance to hit here, but unfortunately, ANet hasn't done a good time teaching/scaffolding player skill to match the expectations of the content they made. Also, the encounter design is probably still poorly thought out, given the accusations of getting RNG-screwed by invuln phases with ridiculously low cooldowns. 

 

There's room for some challenge, but that requires a lot of what ANet isn't doing for it to go well. We need a proper tutorial, early, and far better conveyance during encounters. 

[ctorrezan.3498]

I started playing GW2 in the middle of last year and one of the things I liked the most was completing Queensdale and seeing a lot of players together, with legendaries, skins etc and suddenly a huge boss (Shadow Behemoth) coming up and everyone attacking, I also joined them and managed to participate even with my basic gear, since then i've always been doing meta events and world boss when i can play (Teq, triple trouble, karka, chaq etc) and it's really cool, from there I understood how the game embraced all players, where I didn't have predefined builds and skills, where I could do things in other ways, currently I only need 1 weapon and 2 armors to complete my ascended set and what I'm doing by the game mode I like the most (WvW) and crafting, I don't have a lot of time to dedicate to the game and so I consider myself casual, but I also want to improve and it was great not having to become a hardcore player to get these things, but now with this meta in that streamers, pro-raiders and other players who are paying people to leave the maps, demanding achievements, builds and classes and still sending a "git gud" all this feeling of satisfaction with the game is not being the same anymore, I don't care this kind of thing in raids and more hardcore content, but I think a world boss of a meta that is part of the main story shouldn't be like that.

[Kikokuma.9405]

On 3/5/2022 at 10:14 AM, Lance Coolee.9480 said:

I'll be bold - Open world content should be achievable BY ALL, regardless of skill level. Open world METAs are the sight-seer's trails, the amusement park ride that both parents and children can enjoy,  the low-intensity entertainment that is widely inclusive.

While i disagree with this thought, i get what you are getting at. You have to understand if you are a competent player, just competent... then you are probably still like 20% - 30% DPS under a true min/max player / tryharder. And if you are a casual player... you could easily be 50% less DPS than a competent player. 
So no, i don't think ALL open world content should be achievable by everyone. Then we end up with extremely easy content like in the base GW2 zones. 
But, in the case of these big meta events and everything they need to be tuned as such that the casual players don't drag down the others, and the tryhards / min/maxers can carry the others. It takes teamwork and in that case should be doable with help. 

[Tarami.9124]

1 hour ago, Kikokuma.9405 said:

While i disagree with this thought, i get what you are getting at. You have to understand if you are a competent player, just competent... then you are probably still like 20% - 30% DPS under a true min/max player / tryharder. And if you are a casual player... you could easily be 50% less DPS than a competent player. 
So no, i don't think ALL open world content should be achievable by everyone. Then we end up with extremely easy content like in the base GW2 zones. 
But, in the case of these big meta events and everything they need to be tuned as such that the casual players don't drag down the others, and the tryhards / min/maxers can carry the others. It takes teamwork and in that case should be doable with help. 

I think the argument was that in a mixed group, all OW content should be doable, with which I agree. In the average group of 40 OW players, there'll always be a few who know what to do, some that don't but are capable of following cues and some that just 1111 to victory. If the entire group were people doing 1111 to victory then, no, I don't think they should be guaranteed success either. I don't think that's generally the case, though.

Edited March 8, 2022 by Tarami.9124
Clarified that I'm talking about OW content.

[Sejin.4591]

The Soo-Won fight is amazing and I love it. I've come to notice, every fail I've had, people are constantly dying and don't know what to do. There's at least 10+ people who die to her Claw Slam 30 seconds into the fight and then continue to do so. No ones trying to learn the mechanics, dodge the mechanics, or even put in any kind of effort. People are so conditioned to just stacking and dpsing to push phases, and that just doesn't cut it for Soo-Won. I've had two successful runs on her with pugs, and the rest have all been fails. Am I mad at Anet? not even close. am I upset at people who just stand there dying to the same thing over and over and refuse to do mechanics, absolutely. I'm tired of seeing people whine about this boss when all it requires is a brain and eyes. Stop standing in her Claw slam and getting instantly downed. 10 people down = 10 people reviving. That's nearly half a raid group down to reviving people who can't seem to hit shift. This is happening constantly with all her 1 shot mechanics. People lay there on the ground expecting revives instead of using the waypoint ANET GAVE US. It's literally holding our hands.  Just stop complaining and learn the fight. I get second hand embarrassment for everyone who just stands there in dies over and over to the same thing. It's just classic open world pug pvers at this point.

[MechanicalMind.9126]

On 3/5/2022 at 12:14 PM, Lance Coolee.9480 said:

but open world content isn't the venue for it. Challenges need to be opted in and need to be form-fitted for audiences purposefully seeking it out. Challenging content has low participation for a reason - it is selective and more demanding. Force-feeding that content to the general public isn't going to get greater adoption, it's going to outcast those who aren't actively interested.

 

Snipped for focus. Quoted for truth. 

 

 

[Astralporing.1957]

2 hours ago, Kikokuma.9405 said:

While i disagree with this thought, i get what you are getting at. You have to understand if you are a competent player, just competent... then you are probably still like 20% - 30% DPS under a true min/max player / tryharder. And if you are a casual player... you could easily be 50% less DPS than a competent player. 
So no, i don't think ALL open world content should be achievable by everyone. Then we end up with extremely easy content like in the base GW2 zones. 
But, in the case of these big meta events and everything they need to be tuned as such that the casual players don't drag down the others, and the tryhards / min/maxers can carry the others. It takes teamwork and in that case should be doable with help. 

You underestimate how big the gap is. If it was as low as you say, most of the issues we have here would probably not exist. Unfortunately, the reality is much harsher. The dps of an average, casual player is around 3-4k. Competent ones will do somewhere around 6-10k. In a game where benchmarks are often significantly above 40k and hardcore players can easily get at least half that number.

There's no way to make the fight challenging to hardcore players without making it impossible for average/competent casuals to pass. There's no way to tweak the difficulty so the fight is challenging, but passable to average/competent casuals without hardcores trivializing it with their vastly superior dps numbers. As such, content for those two groups should be clearly separated (or, at the very least, the harcore, challenging content should be separated from the part of the game that aims at a majority of players).

[Kikokuma.9405]

1 hour ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

You underestimate how big the gap is. If it was as low as you say, most of the issues we have here would probably not exist. Unfortunately, the reality is much harsher. The dps of an average, casual player is around 3-4k. Competent ones will do somewhere around 6-10k. In a game where benchmarks are often significantly above 40k and hardcore players can easily get at least half that number.

There's no way to make the fight challenging to hardcore players without making it impossible for average/competent casuals to pass. There's no way to tweak the difficulty so the fight is challenging, but passable to average/competent casuals without hardcores trivializing it with their vastly superior dps numbers. As such, content for those two groups should be clearly separated (or, at the very least, the harcore, challenging content should be separated from the part of the game that aims at a majority of players).

And this also shows the difference of looking at the bell curve of stats and looking at the difference of the top 0.1% vs the bottom 1%. And what to gear content toward. In my opinion the top like 5%  to 10% of players aren't even playing a game, they are playing statistics. Which i personally find kinda sad and boring... And also is responsible for like 80% of the toxicity of every game. (you must use this gear, you must play this build, you must use these skills, you must do these quests.... etc...) IMO atleast everyone else is having fun. 

[Bunny.9834]

2 minutes ago, Kikokuma.9405 said:

And this also shows the difference of looking at the bell curve of stats and looking at the difference of the top 0.1% vs the bottom 1%. And what to gear content toward. In my opinion the top like 5%  to 10% of players aren't even playing a game, they are playing statistics. Which i personally find kinda sad and boring... And also is responsible for like 80% of the toxicity of every game. (you must use this gear, you must play this build, you must use these skills, you must do these quests.... etc...) IMO atleast everyone else is having fun. 

This is literally the difference between Casual Gamers and Elitist Raiders. 
 

Which is why Open World is a great option for your casual gamers, because you don't necessarily be a mathematician to beat game. 

 

[Tarami.9124]

Really, I think the rule of thumb for OW content is that it should always be positive to get more help, regardless of the skill of the player. When that isn't true, you get gatekeeping.

[Lance Coolee.9480]

20 hours ago, Kikokuma.9405 said:

While i disagree with this thought, i get what you are getting at. You have to understand if you are a competent player, just competent... then you are probably still like 20% - 30% DPS under a true min/max player / tryharder. And if you are a casual player... you could easily be 50% less DPS than a competent player. 
So no, i don't think ALL open world content should be achievable by everyone. Then we end up with extremely easy content like in the base GW2 zones. 
But, in the case of these big meta events and everything they need to be tuned as such that the casual players don't drag down the others, and the tryhards / min/maxers can carry the others. It takes teamwork and in that case should be doable with help. 

I appreciate the callout, and certainly recognize that "open-world content" covers some fairly wide ground; however, I do firmly stand behind my position that open-world content, even major map METAs, should be as widely inclusive as possible, given its base story-telling and atmospheric nature.

Here's why open world METAs are terrible places for this type of difficult content:

1. Groups aiming for difficult content need to be able to firmly control their team composition. The open world is a terrible place for this (as is evident with groups now trying to form in Arborstone ahead of the META to try and mitigate this).

2. Groups aiming for difficult content need the opportunity to fail/recover/repeat quickly. I don't think I need to explain why the time investment for this META substantially hinders this.

 

Now let me share a different perspective. I'm 40yrs old now (nuts, I know). When I started this game, I was dating. Since then, I've bought a house, got married, and had TWO kids. I wish I could share with the world the sheer awe in my now 8yr old daughter's eyes when she fought Mordremoth for the first time and WON! She is now a hooked gamer (among other amazing things), and all because of the community and amazing story-telling nature of this games' open world content. THAT is what I'd like to fight to preserve here. I never once said this game shouldn't have incredibly challenging content, just to push it through the right medium.

Edited March 9, 2022 by Lance Coolee.9480

[Metricos.5617]

I really don't think the meta needs to be scaled down in difficulty. There's so little OW content that's *really* engaging for large groups. Leave it as-is.

[Doghouse.1562]

On 3/5/2022 at 6:14 PM, Lance Coolee.9480 said:

I truly believe ArenaNet lost sight of what purpose Open World content fulfilled with the Dragon's End meta.

I'll be bold - Open world content should be achievable BY ALL, regardless of skill level. Open world METAs are the sight-seer's trails, the amusement park ride that both parents and children can enjoy,  the low-intensity entertainment that is widely inclusive.

And to the try-hard elitists who argue this game needs more challenging content - I won't argue against more difficult puzzles, but open world content isn't the venue for it. Challenges need to be opted in and need to be form-fitted for audiences purposefully seeking it out. Challenging content has low participation for a reason - it is selective and more demanding. Force-feeding that content to the general public isn't going to get greater adoption, it's going to outcast those who aren't actively interested.

Yup. By all means make this a raid as well, but it's the "climax" of 10 years of story; after a decade of playing, those of us who don't raid and don't want to raid deserve something epic, sure, but more than that, something that we can succeed at without investing literal days of our lives. And I'm saying that as someone who really doesn't care one way or the other whether I get the turtle mount or not.

Edited March 9, 2022 by Doghouse.1562

[Doghouse.1562]

4 hours ago, Metricos.5617 said:

I really don't think the meta needs to be scaled down in difficulty. There's so little OW content that's *really* engaging for large groups. Leave it as-is.

Except that this is the single worst meta to choose to do that on. It's the final part of a 10-year story. Beef another meta up, by all means - but the significant proportion of the player population who don't raid have earned the right to closure. Anything less is grossly disrespectful and misjudged.

(Nor, right now at least, is it really OW. To stand a chance of a clear you pretty much have to queue and join a squad as soon as the previous meta ends, and your map will be full a couple of minutes later. It's not technically an instance, but no-one else is getting in unless they're very persistent, and fairly lucky. And your chances of just happening to stroll into a pre-meta DE map, that then goes on to successfully clear, are somewhere between "slim" and "snowball's chance in Hell". Basically it's only OW in the most pedantic meaning of the term.)

Edited March 9, 2022 by Doghouse.1562

[The Boz.2038]

There is no need to type out meta in allcaps.

[Doghouse.1562]

20 minutes ago, The Boz.2038 said:

There is no need to type out meta in allcaps.

Sorry - tytping with an injured finger. Not deliberate. I've amended it.

Edit: Huh. Not my post with the problem anyway. Having a good day here. (I wonder what I edited...?!?)

Edited March 9, 2022 by Doghouse.1562

[Drakth.1875]

5 hours ago, Metricos.5617 said:

I really don't think the meta needs to be scaled down in difficulty. There's so little OW content that's *really* engaging for large groups. Leave it as-is.

Thats right, there is no need to change the difficulty, they just need to remove the turtle from the meta.

[volca.7234]

as the darksouls people say, gitgud.

But as we say here in guildwars, gitguild

get yourself a guild of like minded people who wants to finish this meta, the game gave you the tools and your frustration is self inflicted, this is not a solo game, this is (for the first time thx to EoD) an actual MMO, so establish a guild

If you want the 3 or 5 golds the guild establishment fees i am ready to give you that, i am being honest and without a shred of sarcasm or irony, i want to not only see you take that water noodle boss, but also have 10 20 30 friends as a reward.

Edited March 9, 2022 by volca.7234

[Astralporing.1957]

6 hours ago, Metricos.5617 said:

I really don't think the meta needs to be scaled down in difficulty. There's so little OW content that's *really* engaging for large groups. Leave it as-is.

I guess then a number of raid encounters should get scaled down in difficulty. There's so little of raid content at OW level of difficulty, after all.

[volca.7234]

7 minutes ago, volca.7234 said:

as the darksouls people say, gitgud.

But as we say here in guildwars, gitguild

get yourself a guild of like minded people who wants to finish this meta, the game gave you the tools and your frustration is self inflicted, this is not a solo game, this is (for the first time thx to EoD) an actual MMO, so establish a guild

If you want the 3 or 5 golds the guild establishment fees i am ready to give you that, i am being honest and without a shred of sarcasm or irony, i want to not only see you take that water noodle boss, but also have 10 20 30 friends as a reward.

You know what? i am doubling down

 

EVERYONE IN THE THREAD STRUGGLING WITH THE META:

I am ready to establish a guild or talk with big guild leaders in EU at least to organize and invite 3 or 4 well experienced commanders to do this meta with you, got ties to really big guilds with amazingly skilled commanders and players, if you want simply quote me with your server NA or EU, thats all you need to do, and if you don't get your turtle on the first try i will myself give you 10 golds of my bank, my max wealth is like 400ish gold liquid and assets so 10 gold really hurts me to give, but im willing to do so.

 

[Tails.9372]

18 hours ago, Kikokuma.9405 said:

And what to gear content toward.

That's not even a question as the official description of OW content explicitly states that it's designed for casual play and that you don't need a party to do the events / they don't put players against each other for how engage with the content.

So yes, the OP is 100% right with this which is especially bad sice you would at least expect the "final big celebratory OW map" to adhere to the principles this type of content is based on.

Edited March 9, 2022 by Tails.9372

[Ashantara.8731]

20 hours ago, Sejin.4591 said:

The Soo-Won fight is amazing and I love it. I've come to notice, every fail I've had, people are constantly dying and don't know what to do. There's at least 10+ people who die to her Claw Slam 30 seconds into the fight and then continue to do so. No ones trying to learn the mechanics, dodge the mechanics, or even put in any kind of effort. People are so conditioned to just stacking and dpsing to push phases, and that just doesn't cut it for Soo-Won. I've had two successful runs on her with pugs, and the rest have all been fails. Am I mad at Anet? not even close. am I upset at people who just stand there dying to the same thing over and over and refuse to do mechanics, absolutely. I'm tired of seeing people whine about this boss when all it requires is a brain and eyes. Stop standing in her Claw slam and getting instantly downed. 10 people down = 10 people reviving. That's nearly half a raid group down to reviving people who can't seem to hit shift. This is happening constantly with all her 1 shot mechanics. People lay there on the ground expecting revives instead of using the waypoint ANET GAVE US. It's literally holding our hands.  Just stop complaining and learn the fight. I get second hand embarrassment for everyone who just stands there in dies over and over to the same thing. It's just classic open world pug pvers at this point.

I know a lot of players who play on laptops, and not even necessarily gaming laptops. I also know players who have older desktop rigs and experience severe lag during mass events under DX9 (not even sure their rigs have DX11 support for the coming switch in GW2).

I'm saying this to point out that, given some thought (and I have been pondering why what you mentioned happens a lot in non-raid level squads during DE), I don't think a lot of people attempting this even are truly lacking reflexes or have not generally mastered the art of dodging. 😉 I believe it is more of a technical issue. Yes, some might be just not used to moving properly (probably the same people who complained about the Balthazar battle at the end of PoF), but a majority might indeed simply not see the AoE in time.

That's something to keep in mind, too.