Who is the Dragon's End meta for?

[EveningTempo.4796]

Crossposting this because I doubt Anet looks at their subreddit.

 

Few people are happy with the way EoD's open world finishes out. Who are they? Through the process of elimination:

 

1. Dragon's End is not for casual gamers with a language barrier, slower reaction times, or any other ability-limiting factor. The story mode up to this point has barely prepared them for the new strikes, and it has definitely not prepared them for this. In most other metas victory is achieved merely by stacking on the driver or, if there isn't one, going to where all the people are. In the few metas that are somewhat difficult, a handful of veteran players can carry the map to victory with extremely basic coordination - no build checks, no voice chat, no hour-long prep. Compare to Dragon's End where each casual player in the instance significantly lowers the chance of success. Once a handicapped player realizes this, they have two options. Give up, or continue to grief 50+ players for hours at a time hoping to get carried.
2. Dragon's End is not for casual gamers who are easily discouraged by elitism and toxicity. These are players that have the will and potential to learn game mechanics and skill rotations but are put off by high-end players that have neither the time nor the patience to train them. To the GW2 community's credit, there are still plenty of people that will answer honest questions in map chat. However, if the casual gamer happens to be in an organized instance, the members of the organized squad have more incentive than ever to ask or tell this player to leave the map. Even if other veteran players do not agree with the idea of this kind of gatekeeping, more often than not they just let it happen because after failing the meta for the umpteenth time they need every advantage they can get.
3. Dragon's End is not for anyone who is easily discouraged by failure. Mid-level and hardcore gamers especially already feel like they cannot improve further, cannot do anything more to improve the odds of success. Aggravating this issue is the fact that players of all skill levels are constantly killed in demeaning ways. Those that are downed too far from the stack will not be resed given that the fight is a DPS check. Those that are caught in whirlpools will not be freed given how chunky the breakbars are. Those that are chain cc'd outside of Aurene's crystals have no choice but to watch the slow march of the tidal wave consume them. What's odd is that the final story boss has established that people don't have to die for the battle to feel epic. Or are the invincible commanders (of their personal stories) just supposed to accept that in reality (the open world) they are just redshirts?
4. Dragon's End is not for mid-level or hardcore gamers who are used to being rewarded for their commitment. The reward for completing the meta is not proportional to the length or difficulty of the meta. Failure gives almost no rewards, failure is time-consuming, and failure is common. In order to feel fair the rewards for success must be very enticing. The biggest reward for success is a one-off collection starter. There is no real reason for players that want good return on investment to continue to slave away in Dragon's End after their first clear.
5. Dragon's End is not for players with low-end devices.
6. Dragon's End is not for players with high latency.
7. Dragon's End is not for players with poor luck. Even if you do not fall into any of the aforementioned categories, you must avoid being dropped into an instance that has been doomed by too many inexperienced players and/or invuln spams.

In conclusion, Dragon's End is for players that are: able to play (if not already playing) the game at a higher level than what the story has trained them for; okay with being told to leave; okay with telling others to leave; okay with feeling powerless to hard-carry themselves; okay with walking away from a 2 hour session with only the friends you made along the way to show for it; equipped with a decent computer and internet connection; and pretty lucky.

[Slowpokeking.8720]

I don't see this meta live long if they don't make any change. It would quickly die off once ppl got their turtle or removed the requirement.

[Metricos.5617]

Y'all. You really have got to start reading dev posts. You don't have to do the meta for the turtle once the next patch hits. You can just buy the egg and proceed to whine about some other part of the game you don't want to do.

Or I suppose you could keep making clone thread after clone thread instead of using one of the ones that already exists. 

[Peterson.5172]

Just now, Metricos.5617 said:

Y'all. You really have got to start reading dev posts. You don't have to do the meta for the turtle once the next patch hits. You can just buy the egg and proceed to whine about some other part of the game you don't want to do.

Or I suppose you could keep making clone thread after clone thread instead of using one of the ones that already exists. 

i do read them that's why i said "until anet makes the changes"

and yes they are boosting the gold per hr, but if they are doing it like they are with nerfing the event, it'll be 5 silver per event or something

even if they boost the gph to match dragonfall/drizzlewood, the high effort and chances to win will not attract general farming

[Witch of Doom.5739]

I actually found this an interesting read.  I fall into the second category, a casual (but longtime, been around since the beta of GW1) player who is easily discouraged by toxicity.  This is why I don't play PvP, although I do like groups for metas such as Dragonstand, bounties, and so forth.  My way is not the "right" way to play but it's right for me.

At this point I don't know if I even want the Siege Turtle at all, but if I do, I'll go with what sounds like the easier route of saving writs or whatever and buying the egg.  I'm already put off that we have to do the story 9 times (ain't no way, I'm bored with the first go-round) to get all the Elite Spec weapon collections.

Edited March 11, 2022 by Witch of Doom.5739
brevity

[Slowpokeking.8720]

16 minutes ago, Metricos.5617 said:

Y'all. You really have got to start reading dev posts. You don't have to do the meta for the turtle once the next patch hits. You can just buy the egg and proceed to whine about some other part of the game you don't want to do.

Or I suppose you could keep making clone thread after clone thread instead of using one of the ones that already exists. 

I'm sure this meta would die off soon after this happens if they don't do any nerf. Its length and difficulty gave ppl little reason to repeat it.

 

Also some collection weapons were behind it as well.

[EveningTempo.4796]

28 minutes ago, Metricos.5617 said:

Y'all. You really have got to start reading dev posts. You don't have to do the meta for the turtle once the next patch hits. You can just buy the egg and proceed to whine about some other part of the game you don't want to do.

Or I suppose you could keep making clone thread after clone thread instead of using one of the ones that already exists. 

And you really have to start reading the threads you reply to. Part of the reason this meta is so problematic is that there is nothing worthwhile you can get from it after you've gotten the turtle. I am not saying move the turtle. I am saying fix the meta so moving the turtle isn't necessary. And the proposed changes from the devs don't cut it.

[Xerxez.7361]

I thought the point of the DE Meta was raise interest in Raiding, but its actually harder than a couple of Raids and far less rewarding.

[Slowpokeking.8720]

8 minutes ago, Xerxez.7361 said:

I thought the point of the DE Meta was raise interest in Raiding, but its actually harder than a couple of Raids and far less rewarding.

And I doubt those who spent 10+tries would even want to touch it again after got their eggs without nerf.

 

I did it with 3 and I don't want to touch it again.

[Metricos.5617]

58 minutes ago, EveningTempo.4796 said:

And you really have to start reading the threads you reply to. Part of the reason this meta is so problematic is that there is nothing worthwhile you can get from it after you've gotten the turtle. I am not saying move the turtle. I am saying fix the meta so moving the turtle isn't necessary. And the proposed changes from the devs don't cut it.

Again. The rewards are fine. Do events. Get a buff. Have a bunch of chests to open. Go around and do collections for more achievements for more rewards post-win.

It's literally fine.

 

[Necrosian.1359]

47 minutes ago, Slowpokeking.8720 said:

And I doubt those who spent 10+tries would even want to touch it again after got their eggs without nerf.

 

I did it with 3 and I don't want to touch it again.

Yeah you're describing me. Took 20+ tries to get the turtle. Won't touch the poopfest that is the Dragons End Meta.

Edited March 11, 2022 by Necrosian.1359

[ugrakarma.9416]

there's not for players to me too:

 

i have "skill", i did migraine and other hard stuff. i have 6years in game, i was dedicated to WvW for like 2 years, on pvp about 9 months to a year.

 

Im 40yo, i am software developer, i just want chill, not deal with complex rotations on bizarre hybrids builds. i like mindless zerg farming, and also i love mindless blobs on wvw.

 

When i wanna play complex stuff, i go to hearts of iron 4, i haven't touched that for 2 months, if gw2 become 'complex enough", i just leave to go do 'nerd stuff' playing strategy games.

 

 

[Peterson.5172]

13 minutes ago, Metricos.5617 said:

Again. The rewards are fine. Do events. Get a buff. Have a bunch of chests to open. Go around and do collections for more achievements for more rewards post-win.

It's literally fine.

 

just about everyone agrees it needs better rewards, and anet is buffing the rewards on tuesday btw... if you dont have anything constructive to say, why waste everyone's time

[ugrakarma.9416]

59 minutes ago, Xerxez.7361 said:

I thought the point of the DE Meta was raise interest in Raiding, but its actually harder than a couple of Raids and far less rewarding.

this is one part of problem, the idea of fix the player. they should fix the game instead, not the player.  I had a brain tumor in 2021, the doctors already fixed me.

Edited March 11, 2022 by ugrakarma.9416

[LordMorgul.9845]

i totally agreee this post, i got turtle in my 2 meta attempt, the meta is ok just lower the boss hp or increase time, the first attempt that failed we were a disorganized group whit a lot of people under the 5k ap, and they just don't have the equip, take every aoe in the face, stay dead waiting ressing, don't do cc and other like that, so they in my opinion need to go away from the EoD meta and retourn to learn the game, is the same thing of t2 people that kite agony to t4 and tink's they are expert, no u not... so little nerf on the meta but stright to the collection as it is, and btw the strike is much worst than the meta, if u need to leave somenting for those no hands pp leave the strike not the meta...

[Deihnyx.6318]

 

2 hours ago, EveningTempo.4796 said:

Dragon's End is not for casual gamers who are easily discouraged by elitism and toxicity

This argument is getting old. Toxicity is here, on these forums. Out there there's many guilds that run these meta and are very helpful to people, not the one bit toxic. You'll always have kittens everywhere but that is true for all content, even stupid easy content.

The rest of these arguments are... fine I guess? I don't know, I don't see the problem with having meta that doesn't cater to everyone. There's also one thing to remember, even a simple, easy meta doesn't cater to everyone. Players who like being challenged for example have no real incentive to do it beside the rewards, the meta itself isn't an incentive.
Some arguments are also kind of stretching like low spec / high ping. All meta can suffer from that, although I beat this meta on an Intel NUC so it's definitely possible lol.

I would say though, the one real problem of this meta is setting itself up to be something challenging, that people need to learn, but then timegating it behind a long prep time. If you want people to learn they should be able to restart quickly and be given incentive to keep going. That's what raids do by giving you a few token when you fail and let you try again immediately.

Edited March 11, 2022 by Deihnyx.6318

[Slowpokeking.8720]

39 minutes ago, Deihnyx.6318 said:

 

This argument is getting old. Toxicity is here, on these forums. Out there there's many guilds that run these meta and are very helpful to people, not the one bit toxic. You'll always have kittens everywhere but that is true for all content, even stupid easy content.

The rest of these arguments are... fine I guess? I don't know, I don't see the problem with having meta that doesn't cater to everyone. There's also one thing to remember, even a simple, easy meta doesn't cater to everyone. Players who like being challenged for example have no real incentive to do it beside the rewards, the meta itself isn't an incentive.
Some arguments are also kind of stretching like low spec / high ping. All meta can suffer from that, although I beat this meta on an Intel NUC so it's definitely possible lol.

I would say though, the one real problem of this meta is setting itself up to be something challenging, that people need to learn, but then timegating it behind a long prep time. If you want people to learn they should be able to restart quickly and be given incentive to keep going. That's what raids do by giving you a few token when you fail and let you try again immediately.

 

Why didn't they do TT and Serpent's Ire everyday to help others then? Will they keep do it for years?

 

How many of the ppl would still do the meta daily after got their turtle/collection item?

 

It has little to do with challenging and improvement, since it's a 50 men meta, your skill means little, what matters is can you get into the right map.

[Borked.6824]

3 hours ago, Metricos.5617 said:

Y'all. You really have got to start reading dev posts. You don't have to do the meta for the turtle once the next patch hits. You can just buy the egg and proceed to whine about some other part of the game you don't want to do.

Or I suppose you could keep making clone thread after clone thread instead of using one of the ones that already exists. 

The turtle mount is trash.  If people don't know that by now, they will in short order.  The turtle is white noise in this discussion, so stop generalizing that everyone doing the meta are only after worthless mounts.  The important thing at stake is quality playable content.  

[ugrakarma.9416]

14 minutes ago, Borked.6824 said:

The turtle mount is trash.  If people don't know that by now, they will in short order.  The turtle is white noise in this discussion, so stop generalizing that everyone doing the meta are only after worthless mounts.  The important thing at stake is quality playable content.  

don't understimate childsh appel of mount, its seems to me that riding a pet is really a good carrot.

remember warclaw, is even more useless for pvers, but they flooded wvw anyway.

its anet easy money.

Edited March 11, 2022 by ugrakarma.9416

[Gorem.8104]

3 hours ago, Slowpokeking.8720 said:

I'm sure this meta would die off soon after this happens if they don't do any nerf. Its length and difficulty gave ppl little reason to repeat it.

 

Also some collection weapons were behind it as well.

Honestly at this point I want to know the data more so for unique people completing it not the same raiders spamming it to make it look like its being completed when its the same raiders doing that just to try and not get the thing nerfed. Essentially, ruining it for the entire playerbase. 

Because the Turtle was the only reason people were doing this meta. It was the only reward. The pre events need to give out 40 gold per hour, the boss itself needs to then dump like 20 gold on you. And even then its still not worth the time and effort unless the boss gets large changes to remove the RNG and fix the whirlpools. The new timer is 2hours and a half to 3 hours prep, so that you can get in an instance that will do it, not just so that you have done the pre's ect. 3 hours to do a single meta and get rewarded silver as you can still fail regardless right now. Just... I don't get it. 

[EveningTempo.4796]

2 hours ago, Deihnyx.6318 said:

 

This argument is getting old. Toxicity is here, on these forums. Out there there's many guilds that run these meta and are very helpful to people, not the one bit toxic. You'll always have kittens everywhere but that is true for all content, even stupid easy content.

The rest of these arguments are... fine I guess? I don't know, I don't see the problem with having meta that doesn't cater to everyone. There's also one thing to remember, even a simple, easy meta doesn't cater to everyone. Players who like being challenged for example have no real incentive to do it beside the rewards, the meta itself isn't an incentive.
Some arguments are also kind of stretching like low spec / high ping. All meta can suffer from that, although I beat this meta on an Intel NUC so it's definitely possible lol.

I would say though, the one real problem of this meta is setting itself up to be something challenging, that people need to learn, but then timegating it behind a long prep time. If you want people to learn they should be able to restart quickly and be given incentive to keep going. That's what raids do by giving you a few token when you fail and let you try again immediately.

Reread your first paragraph. You admit that while there are plenty of helpful people, there is still a group of toxic players making the meta uninviting to more casual players (more than it already is thanks to Anet). If they exist in other places, what makes you think there aren't a ton more of them here, where many veterans are getting fed up with losing to open world content despite spending 2 hours prepping and organizing? You are in denial if you think people are less frustrated than they have ever been. You probably don't care either way since you are not a victim.

Low spec / high ping players do exist and prior to this meta, they were able to do open world content despite their handicap. Dragon's End is a DPS check that punishes low DPS and shaky boon support, which these players cannot control. If they want to see everything gated behind DE clears, they have to rely on other players to pick up their slack. This is unfair to both them and the people they are playing with. No one should feel like a burden while playing a game they bought.

And what is this about something having to cater to everyone? Metas have never tried to cater to everyone, they were always for people with not enough motivation to do harder PVE content that wanted to farm certain crafting materials or some gold. Every time a new meta strayed away from this niche it had to be corrected soon after. And you are mistaken if you think every single player that "like[s] being challenged" never touches any unchallenging content in this game.

Metas are a core part of the casual player's gameplay loop, and nothing in base game, HOT, POF, or EOD sets players up to meet the requirements for beating Dragon's End. If Anet wants the game to go in this direction, they should first create an ingame DPS meter, squad-priority open world populating, tutorials that explain what each boon and condition does, etc. All of that first. Not like this.

[Gibson.4036]

2 hours ago, ugrakarma.9416 said:

 

its anet easy money.

Only if enough people get it. Otherwise there aren't enough people to buy the gemstore skins.

Edited March 11, 2022 by Gibson.4036

[Lizandre.3514]

I quit WoW (where I was raiding in hard mode) a few months ago to play gw2. I loved the open world content because for the first time in a very long time I felt just happy to play the way I wanted without minmaxing my character. I don't want to return to playing a spreadsheet game where you have to read countless sites and guides to do anything.

If gw2 moves in that direction for open world content, bye.

Edited March 11, 2022 by Lizandre.3514

[Deihnyx.6318]

 

4 hours ago, EveningTempo.4796 said:

Reread your first paragraph. You admit that while there are plenty of helpful people, there is still a group of toxic players making the meta uninviting to more casual players (more than it already is thanks to Anet). If they exist in other places, what makes you think there aren't a ton more of them here, where many veterans are getting fed up with losing to open world content despite spending 2 hours prepping and organizing? You are in denial if you think people are less frustrated than they have ever been. You probably don't care either way since you are not a victim.

That's assuming I was talking about toxicity in hardcore players, I wasn't. I've seen enough toxicity from the (allegedly) casual crowd on these forums lately to last till the next xpac, if there's one at this point.

Players that want to run their map, strikes or whatnot with a 'higher standard' do not impact you. At worst you see a message from them in LFG. It's only "toxic" when players for whom this message is not meant for try to sneak in. For the rest there's plenty of options and people willing to teach and even learn together.

Almost the entire game and updates for the past few years have been entirely dedicated to (allegedly) the casual crowd. There hasn't been fractals in forever, no raids in forever. We got 4 strikers that aren't CM or anywhere close to that content. WvW Players? Nothing. PvP Players? Forever stuck in balance hell.
Meanwhile, the casual crowd gets everything, and when there is -One- meta that tries to cater to a few more people (and by the way it's not the first meta to be challenging during the first days, far from it) there are pages after pages of threads for that very same topic, each new one more hyperbolic than the other. I call that toxic.
Victims? Yeah, no. I get that it's frustrating for some, but victim is really pushing it given the circumstances. You only have to wait a few days for Anet to figure out the real success rate and makes changes, which they do every single time (kind of why there is no stepping stone also, because there's always backlash).

Meanwhile for other people it was an opportunity to connect, join guild discords, talk to people and self-organize after so long not having anything but dragonstorm and the likes to do.

Edited March 12, 2022 by Deihnyx.6318

[EveningTempo.4796]

3 hours ago, Deihnyx.6318 said:

 

That's assuming I was talking about toxicity in hardcore players, I wasn't. I've seen enough toxicity from the (allegedly) casual crowd on these forums lately to last till the next xpac, if there's one at this point.

Players that want to run their map, strikes or whatnot with a 'higher standard' do not impact you. At worst you see a message from them in LFG. It's only "toxic" when players for whom this message is not meant for try to sneak in. For the rest there's plenty of options and people willing to teach and even learn together.

Almost the entire game and updates for the past few years have been entirely dedicated to (allegedly) the casual crowd. There hasn't been fractals in forever, no raids in forever. We got 4 strikers that aren't CM or anywhere close to that content. WvW Players? Nothing. PvP Players? Forever stuck in balance hell.
Meanwhile, the casual crowd gets everything, and when there is -One- meta that tries to cater to a few more people (and by the way it's not the first meta to be challenging during the first days, far from it) there are pages after pages of threads for that very same topic, each new one more hyperbolic than the other. I call that toxic.
Victims? Yeah, no. I get that it's frustrating for some, but victim is really pushing it given the circumstances. You only have to wait a few days for Anet to figure out the real success rate and makes changes, which they do every single time (kind of why there is no stepping stone also, because there's always backlash).

Meanwhile for other people it was an opportunity to connect, join guild discords, talk to people and self-organize after so long not having anything but dragonstorm and the likes to do.

Why wouldn't I assume you were talking about hardcore players when you say "Out there there's many guilds that run these meta and are very helpful to people, not the one bit toxic"? As far as I know most of the guilds that are running the meta are far from casual.

You seem to think there is a whole lot of toxicity being aimed at the hardcore player base for enjoying Dragon's End. But exactly zero PUGs that I have tried this meta with were angry at veteran players for yelling at them to do-more-pres-they're-only-at-7-stacks-what-are-they-doing, or to stop-tasting-the-floor-and-use-the-ewp-omgwtfbbq. The casual playerbase knows that veterans have been failing and tensions are high, and so tolerate that kind of raging because at the end of the day it's all sensible advice for winning. When the event fails, casuals are in fact typing away in chat about all the ways the victory was taken away unfairly from them in the last leg of the fight due to RNG invuln states and the forced pet goldfish roleplay attack. Even hardcore casual players are now able to accurately describe what is wrong with the fight. They grow so fast.

Casual players are angry at Anet for making Seitung, Kaineng, and Echovald the usual stroll through the park and then telling them Dragon's End "was designed from the start to be challenging, but progressively more doable as players learn mechanics and how to handle phase transitions." In other words, Dragon's End was meant to be a wall for players to hit and require significant personal growth to overcome. Only they are being forced to attain this growth at a rate of one attempt every 2 hours with absolutely no help from ingame sources. That's like telling a third grader that he has to learn how to do fifth grade math, but the teacher's going to leave the room so now the third grader has to ask for help from fourth and fifth graders who are already busy trying to do their own math. And the third grader understands that his seniors are making a sacrifice by choosing to help him so he is of course very appreciative. But every now and then comes along a salty fifth grader that tells him he's worthless trash for not being able to figure out the area of a quadrilateral in under 2 minutes. Now the third grader has to defend himself because he is a third grader that the school system expressly has not prepared to do fifth grade math up to this point. Oh, and the only time he is learning fifth grade math is when he is taking a stressful fifth grade-level math test. Oh, and the third grader has to do a ton of third grade math before he can even start trying to learn fifth grade math. So for every 90 minutes he spends doing third grade math, he gets 20 minutes to take a fifth grade math test and if he fails, he has to do more third grade math.

By this point it's a known fact that the reason hardcore content hasn't been developed or updated for so long is because Anet was working on other projects, and the decision was made that the limited resources that could be directed towards GW2 should appeal to the largest demographic possible - which of course are casual, easy-to-please open world players. Now that those projects are gone, Anet has promised to do more for the hardcore player base with the upcoming strike CMs. We will have to wait and see if they deliver.

It is good for Anet to start catering to the hardcore player base. Open world is not the place to do it. Each time they tried, they walked it back. Leave the hardcore content where it belongs, in raids and fractals. Or make a fight that's scaled to a 50-man instanced map. Even the most active guilds probably won't be able to gather up 50 people in their discord to partake at all hours of the day, so doubtless they will start LFGing for PUGs. And since it's instanced, there's much more incentive to actually teach the new players who join the map because 1) the map can be tried again right after a failure and 2) the people they just taught will run with them again and not be replaced with a whole new class of third graders.

Lastly, I don't really care where you decide to draw the line for whether a person is a victim or not. I have played all game modes and reached 95% of the bench for my main class. Only one of my first 6 Dragon's End failures was disorganized. I spent 12 hours fighting a boss that is easy for me and the 40 people that are with me in my squad and getting nothing to show for it. My one victory (and probably the last) was done with the hardstuck discord and that run wasn't much more organized than all the rest. You may not think I am a victim, but I sure feel like one. And you're not going to change how I feel by telling me how I should feel.

Edited March 12, 2022 by EveningTempo.4796
grammar