Dragon's End Meta is Garbage

[Erise.5614]

3 minutes ago, IAmNotMatthew.1058 said:

Nothing in GW2 is "Know everything and perform excellently or fail", and that's even more true for everything about EoD. Just because people got used to steamrolling through open world without worrying about CC, positioning, dodging a little challenge is not a massive curve.

During the story the game doesn't tell you to skip everything and go to Dragon's End for the meta. If you spend the least amount of time on any of the maps you'll encounter the metas. In the next 90 minutes 3 EoD metas will start.

 

The ramp has been far too steep is what I'm saying. It's been too steep with dungeons. It's been too steep with raids. Is still too steep in EoD.

Yes, it's possible to experience the others first. But it's not deliberately designed that way. Meaning if that happens it's an accident. While experiencing DE is fully intended.

Fractals were a good idea but fall short in a few major ways. Strikes were also a good idea on paper but are confused in their difficulty curve. Shiverpeaks is a good introduction but it then needs to ramp up at an even pace. Boneskinner and EoD is too much.

Despite EoD being the best instanced content in the game. There should have been all mechanics in the story version of the boss. And the regular versions shouldn't have instakill mechanics. Truly giving people time to learn. Rather than what we have now in PUGs. People starting out dying and watching the others clear. Barely learning anything but getting a highly negative experience with the content. 

[NorthernRedStar.3054]

13 minutes ago, Erise.5614 said:

Boneskinner

Ehehe. All of skinner's attacks have massive tells and ramp times. If anything, Boneskinner is the perfect example of how bad players are at learning from the obvious. 

[Erise.5614]

15 minutes ago, yann.1946 said:

Like i said before, i wouldnt expect anyone to put themselfs through that perse. The thing i am most curious about though is, when should a meta have a guarantee of winning?

It really depends on the position of the content within the game. A base game / base expansion meta should be successful if ~75% of map capacity do an honest attempt and clear all mechanics. 

There is room for other content. TT isn't actually terrible. While the original version of tequatl was more of a problem. Simply due to achievement distribution and how clearly it was portrayed.

If there was an instanced version / a way to control the map it could have an even lower success rate among the general player population. And could also justify its existence with less engagement.

If it was classified as a new kind of meta event. A step above everything else it could also have a different outcome. 

 

16 minutes ago, yann.1946 said:

I would love to see the data Anet has about this meta, this last statement you made is a pretty strong statement but there is not really a way to check how true it is without the internal data.

I mean. They'll never release all relevant data. But having played it excessively the first week and twice after the patches (to verify if my complaints are still warranted) I do feel like I have a pretty good overview over the situation. 

I'm actually uploading a failed run from just now for everyone here to criticize and tell me what exactly went wrong and how I failed it. Saw it would fail as the boss started. And it did. Was a pug asking for alac and quickness. Subgroups, 1h+ formation. Filling up map early. Stacking buffs. The whole thing. 

The meta is entirely unreasonable for PUGs. Nothing you do has an impact. You need a group of 15 - 25 excellent players to have a chance. It is not tuned around the average player. Only extreme gatekeeping or guild runs have any chance at succeeding remotely reliably. 

[Erise.5614]

2 minutes ago, NorthernRedStar.3054 said:

Ehehe. All of skinner's attacks have massive tells and ramp times. If anything, Boneskinner is the perfect example of how bad players are at learning from the obvious. 

I mean. Very condescending way of putting it. But yes. Some timings are weird so I wouldn't entirely fault players here.

But yes. The average player is not the best at doing all the things asked at once.

But Boneskinner is an excellent example for how to not teach. Just murdering these players isn't teaching. It's telling them "this content is not for you. You will not have fun here" and suggests they should never touch it again.

The game desperately needs a proper progression curve. Actually and in game teaching everything necessary to participate in the end game. 

 

Edited March 30, 2022 by Erise.5614

[NorthernRedStar.3054]

9 minutes ago, Erise.5614 said:

I mean. Very condescending way of putting it. But yes. Some timings are weird so I wouldn't entirely fault players here.

But yes. The average player is not the best at doing all the things asked at once.

But Boneskinner is an excellent example for how to not teach. Just murdering these players isn't teaching. It's telling them "this content is not for you. You will not have fun here" and suggests they should never touch it again.

The game desperately needs a proper progression curve. Actually and in game teaching everything necessary to participate in the end game. 

 

Timings are off? Maybe compared to other encounters, but A) they're still consistent so you can B) learn them.
 

Quote

The average player is not the best at doing all the things asked at once.

There's only one thing at a time, really, and some (most?) fail even at that. 

 

Quote

an excellent example for how to not teach

Raid wings 1-3 do a good job of teaching you the mechanics, yet people still avoid even those wings. It's just an excuse after excuse. You can also clearly see what you killed you in the skinner encounter. 

Boo-hoo, I failed one time - clearly the content is NOT FOR ME.

[Erise.5614]

21 minutes ago, NorthernRedStar.3054 said:

Timings are off? Maybe compared to other encounters, but A) they're still consistent so you can B) learn them.

That's the thing. They are consistent per attack. They aren't consistent between one another.

The jump back into the arena needs earlier dodging than the one that fills out the entire arena. And both are different from the per player indicators. So yeah, it is a little weird.

21 minutes ago, NorthernRedStar.3054 said:

Raid wings 1-3 do a good job of teaching you the mechanics, yet people still avoid even those wings. It's just an excuse after excuse. You can also clearly see what you killed you in the skinner encounter. 

Boo-hoo, I failed one time - clearly the content is NOT FOR ME.

I mean. On one hand. They really didn't. So I'm not sure what your point is. Clearly they aren't doing a good job at teaching. Your opinion isn't really much of a factor here. This is like complaining water flows downhill. If the game failed to prepare players and they don't have a good time getting there and playing the content then it's not the players fault. 

But also. It really doesn't. You can forget even vale guardian without proper equipment, correct team setup and knowing its mechanics. Which is extremely steep for people who didn't even play fractals. Aka, the majority. 

All the relevant basics are never taught. And yes. Slap people across the face and they won't keep coming back for long. To recognize progress and enjoy your learning experience you need quick, positive feedback about things going right. And fast, negative feedback about things going wrong. So you appreciate getting better while not being punished too badly for failure. Ideally personalized. Because when you are in a group and receive group feedback it acts like a layer of obfuscation. In which case it just needs to be all the better at providing feedback. 

Your idea of teaching is 90s game design. Thoroughly outdated because we know for a fact and with plenty of research that other methods of teaching are drastically more efficient. And this one stands somewhere in between slightly effective to counterproductive depending on the person experiencing it. 

Edited March 30, 2022 by Erise.5614

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

Players tend to try teaching others, that's kind of why we have Raid trainings, and by extension Strike and even Fractal trainings. 

Seitung Monastery heart features a bit of help on positioning, CC and combo fields, yet none seem to work. Why? People got used to not needing them.
If someone doesn't want to learn we can't always blame the game for not teaching since there are many people who learnt how to play the game with these "awful methods".

Saying you can't Raid without proper equipment and knowledge is kind of a no brainer, not having the gear and/or knowledge for your role is all kinds of bad. 

[Mithrilos.8036]

7 minutes ago, IAmNotMatthew.1058 said:

 

Saying you can't Raid without proper equipment and knowledge is kind of a no brainer, not having the gear and/or knowledge for your role is all kinds of bad. 

Well I'm going to point out a neutral thing that is this :

Its kinda hard to determine what class what role, because now you can even get Necro support and stuff like that, Guardian not being a tank but being a full on DPS etc etc.

 

It takes some times and experience to determine the potential role of each class, and for that you have to be curious and try them out, or learn it from shared experience via someone else. 

[Erise.5614]

5 minutes ago, IAmNotMatthew.1058 said:

Players tend to try teaching others, that's kind of why we have Raid trainings, and by extension Strike and even Fractal trainings. 

Seitung Monastery heart features a bit of help on positioning, CC and combo fields, yet none seem to work. Why? People got used to not needing them.
If someone doesn't want to learn we can't always blame the game for not teaching since there are many people who learnt how to play the game with these "awful methods".

Saying you can't Raid without proper equipment and knowledge is kind of a no brainer, not having the gear and/or knowledge for your role is all kinds of bad. 

Players teaching other players is not happening to a sufficient amount. The results speak for themselves. 

If someone doesn't want to learn then the game has not given good reasons to learn. Which means more than the assumption that I'm sure immediately springs into your head. But no, it doesn't mean you just need to make everything much more difficult.

Good reasons to learn are good obstacles with the right amount of challenge and continuous feeling of accomplishment and achievement. It can include temporary setbacks but the impact of those needs to be minimized while progress needs to be celebrated in some way.

That is how education works the fastest, the most effective with the highest conversion rate. 

The raid approach of get everything necessary right or fail / be excluded is poor. It goes against these very simple principles. And you can see the corresponding results. 

 

4 minutes ago, LucianDK.8615 said:

The average gamer of this generation needs more handholding for sure, especially if trying to get into an mmo like Guild Wars2

It's not more handholding. It's reason to spend time this way. Old school MMOs would not have a chance in hell to make it in todays landscape because players can actually choose between lots of decent and enjoyable games. They don't have to suffer through negative experiences sticking to one of the three games that exist in the entire world. 

Games like Elden Ring / Dark Souls do a 10x better job at feedback and player education which pays off. Something seemingly extremely difficult is now mainstream content. It's the most obvious proof that anyone can learn anything. That it doesn't need handholding in the sense as you seem to portray it. 

But a game has to clear higher quality standards than they used to. Especially regarding pacing and player education. 

[Ruisen.9471]

2 hours ago, IAmNotMatthew.1058 said:

There is no too high curve.
Seitung meta required you to position yourself, dodge a few stuff and stop focusing the boss to get rid of something small(Bulwark Gyro),
Kaineng, no major mechanics, but required you to focus on other stuff at set interwals(every 25%)
Echovald requires you to constantly move due to the AoEs and requires you to hide behind rubble

These metas are before Dragon's End. Dragon's End makes you focus on enemies other than the boss(Thornheart, Tail), makes you hide from certain attacks, first as standing in Greens, then hiding behind crystals. DE also makes you be on the look out for AoEs. 

Dragon's End is nothing more than the first 3 metas combined into one. You look at a mechanic it is present in either one of the metas from the rest of Cantha.

 

Mechanically, DE meta isn't that bad, its the DPS check that's the problem most people have.

If they designed DE meta without the DPS check, it probably would have been remembered as one of the most epic metas of all time.

Most other metas you have half the zerg going into downstate from AoE's too, and nobody ever complains about that, its pretty normal.

Edited March 30, 2022 by Ruisen.9471

[The Boz.2038]

1 hour ago, Erise.5614 said:

The ramp has been far too steep is what I'm saying. It's been too steep with dungeons. It's been too steep with raids. Is still too steep in EoD.

Am I going to be antagonistic and toxic for quoting this?
Is this what you honestly think? That dungeons are too steep? And raids, too? And what about fractals, is that too steep?

[Ruisen.9471]

10 minutes ago, The Boz.2038 said:

Am I going to be antagonistic and toxic for quoting this?
Is this what you honestly think? That dungeons are too steep? And raids, too? And what about fractals, is that too steep?

He also claimed that nothing has changed with the DE meta since release.

I'm not sure he's playing the same game as us.

  

1 hour ago, Tachenon.5270 said:

I dunno, the outcome seems oddly inconsistent. We're still seeing reports of organized groups failing, while at the same time disorganized groups -- like the one I was in last night -- are succeeding with minutes to spare. Is it RNG, still? Could there be some other factor involved? Some elusive bug?

 

You can still get unlucky, but I'd take these claims with a grain of salt.   People are making claims of "competent" / "organized" with no description of what they even mean.   Their definition of "organized" could mean literally anything.

Edited March 30, 2022 by Ruisen.9471

[Erise.5614]

1 minute ago, The Boz.2038 said:

Am I going to be antagonistic and toxic for quoting this?
Is this what you honestly think? That dungeons are too steep? And raids, too? And what about fractals, is that too steep?

I mean, dungeon design is weird in a lot of ways. And todays dungeon difficulty, while being very outdated in a lot of ways, is mostly fine.

But 2012 dungeons were not fine. No. 

Fractals are in a weird space. Where they are an excellent idea in principle. Guiding people towards better gear step by step. Pushing them to think about their builds. A lot of great ideas. They were lacking in other ways. Lower tiers should have started out with more consistent rotations. As learning 17 fractals in a very short amount of time lacks the consistent environment to understand your personal development between runs. There's also an issue in the onboarding experience as the lower tier LFGs are relatively empty and only have anything at all going on during peak hours. 

So all in all. Good idea. Non perfect execution. But I deliberately didn't include that in my list. I honestly think they mostly failed due to lack of awareness. As in, they aren't portrayed prominently enough within the game. 

[mythical.6315]

9 minutes ago, Erise.5614 said:

I mean, dungeon design is weird in a lot of ways. And todays dungeon difficulty, while being very outdated in a lot of ways, is mostly fine.

But 2012 dungeons were not fine. No. 

You’re contradicting yourself. Just an FYI. 

Edited March 30, 2022 by mythical.6315

[Mithrilos.8036]

My vision for a game like Guild Wars 2 is that, the most futile thing is very important.

People incarnate their character the way they want in the world of Tyria, enjoy the ambiance, the trials and events that this game is bringing to us. There is that main red line in which the whole Guild Wars 2 experience resolve around : the Story; which itself; is linked to the maps and the Meta events. 

 

Obviously, whatever way you want your character to be, it should, in most of the time allow you to clear the major content of that said red line ( I say most of the time because unless you want to troll the game by using weird compo-builds ). Everything else that circle around that red line : Fractals, WvW, sPVP, Raids are also an important part of course of the game experience, but those experience are selected and not mandatory of the core game. 

We are playing a MMO, obviously, there is a huge variety of people with different tastes, skills as player, and expectation from the game. It is important to keep this red line as open to this variety as possible. This is the difficulty that Anet is probably facing in every content they are adding when its about the core game. Also, the fact that the game is stacking up some old issue doesn't help.

The DE meta just unveil once more, some old problems that the game is facing and is stacking up with everything else.

 

Just my thought.

Edited March 30, 2022 by Mithrilos.8036

[Erise.5614]

13 minutes ago, mythical.6315 said:

Yeah because the dungeons from 2012 have changed since then. Oh wait. They haven’t with exception of the revamp of AC and replacing a path in TA. So by your logic, the DE meta will be fine for you in several years.  The only thing that is different from dungeons in 2012 between them now is the time that you’re looking at them. 

The dungeons didn't change much but the game sure did.

Existence of alacrity and quickness have a huge impact. We had a stat bump. Elite specs are often much better equipped to deal with various situations that come up. New stat combinations straight up give you one more key attribute. Vipers, Trailblazers, Vigilant. Runes were buffed so people stop taking runes from 2 sets for raw stats but rather use entire sets.

The game changed man. And old content got a lot easier. 

Edited March 30, 2022 by Erise.5614

[Sobx.1758]

12 hours ago, BadHealer.3608 said:

Sorry, that statement is wrong. To do the last meta you are NOT allowed to dodge the first attack and instead must walk out of it and the rest you should do a dogeroll. Something that has yet to be teached in the game. So we have to hope that the fourth expansion will finally start to teach us this things so that we are ready for the third expansion?

I fail to see how that somehow goes against what I said? Even if there's additional element during the event, it still doesn't make the rest of the taught/reminded mechanics -that are still used more than that attack- irrelevant. So how exactly what I said is wrong?

Edited March 30, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

35 minutes ago, Erise.5614 said:

Players teaching other players is not happening to a sufficient amount. The results speak for themselves. 

Could it be because most of the times when we try people just say "I want to play my way" or even call those who want to teach others toxic? 
 

38 minutes ago, Erise.5614 said:

If someone doesn't want to learn then the game has not given good reasons to learn. Which means more than the assumption that I'm sure immediately springs into your head. But no, it doesn't mean you just need to make everything much more difficult.

Whenever something challenging is introduced you just see salt that it's difficult and it shouldn't be. This is one of those threads. 

I guess the turtle wasn't a good enough reason to learn how to do a Strike. 

43 minutes ago, Erise.5614 said:

Good reasons to learn are good obstacles with the right amount of challenge and continuous feeling of accomplishment and achievement. It can include temporary setbacks but the impact of those needs to be minimized while progress needs to be celebrated in some way.

What do you consider the right amount of challenge? Mashing 1 while watching a movie on a second screen? Because so far it seems like that's your idea of the right amount of challenge for players.

45 minutes ago, Erise.5614 said:

The raid approach of get everything necessary right or fail / be excluded is poor. It goes against these very simple principles. And you can see the corresponding results. 

You fail Greens on VG, people step into Oil on Deimos, someone stands in the group with a number on Li, here are some essential stuff failed, but the squad isn't wiped.
Failing mechanics doesn't get you thrown out of Raids. 

[Mithrilos.8036]

From what I saw, what makes the Soo Won fight ultimatly fail is that half of the zerg alway get downed when the tail strikes, people also are very sluggish and half of the time doesn't react in time when you need to stop hiting her hands to strike the tail.

[Forum Moderator.3074]

Hey, I would like to remind you all that while you are free to share your opinion on difficulty, please try to do it in a civilized manner avoiding comments that are only meant to antagonize certain group of players.

[Sobx.1758]

8 hours ago, Mithrilos.8036 said:

there should be a glossary of what games mechanics are doing and how to use them etc. Especially for combo fields.

I think that's a good idea.

[Mithrilos.8036]

1 hour ago, Mithrilos.8036 said:

Well I'm going to point out a neutral thing that is this :

Its kinda hard to determine what class what role, because now you can even get Necro support and stuff like that, Guardian not being a tank but being a full on DPS etc etc.

 

It takes some times and experience to determine the potential role of each class, and for that you have to be curious and try them out, or learn it from shared experience via someone else. 

I see some confused stare at what I said, well explain ?

I think maybe you should try to see things from the point of view of new players.

Edited March 30, 2022 by Mithrilos.8036

[BadHealer.3608]

1 hour ago, NorthernRedStar.3054 said:

Raid wings 1-3 do a good job of teaching you the mechanics, yet people still avoid even those wings.

For the love of me, I am not able to see the teleport fields from VG. I mean, I did make a video of it, did watch it 3 more times, but on my screen there is never the teleport field that I can see on the other youtube videos. I seem to miss the part of the game, where they teach you to see something that isn't there.

 

So no, Raids are not the best way to teach something.

[Sobx.1758]

5 minutes ago, BadHealer.3608 said:

For the love of me, I am not able to see the teleport fields from VG. I mean, I did make a video of it, did watch it 3 more times, but on my screen there is never the teleport field that I can see on the other youtube videos. I seem to miss the part of the game, where they teach you to see something that isn't there.

 

So no, Raids are not the best way to teach something.

Wait, what? Is this seriously an attempt at saying "my corrupted game files mean the mechanic is bad", or did I somehow completely misunderstand what you've just said? 🤨 

It's right there next to the posts claiming the event is bad/too hard "because my ping is too high". Sorry, but that's not the game's issue and it's time to understand that.

Edited March 30, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

Just now, BadHealer.3608 said:

For the love of me, I am not able to see the teleport fields from VG. I mean, I did make a video of it, did watch it 3 more times, but on my screen there is never the teleport field that I can see on the other youtube videos. I seem to miss the part of the game, where they teach you to see something that isn't there.

 

So no, Raids are not the best way to teach something.

You get a sound cue of them being active and an orange border on your screen.