Dragon's End Meta is Garbage

[Sobx.1758]

5 hours ago, hardy.7469 said:

haven't  been able to beat the meta but my biggest issue is it runs completely counter to the expansion.

EVERYTHING before the expansion, the story, the maps (including the metas), even the strikes, are designed to be casual, quick, and if you know what you're doing, easy enough to complete in small pickup groups of other competent players.

Does it "run completely counter to the expansion" though? The expansion went back to re-explain the relevant ingame mechanics to the players. The last meta event available in the expansion aiming at the players utilizing game's mechanics seems to be in line with what the expansion was doing since you've entered the new maps. In other words: if it wasn't required even at the last meta event of the expansion, then why would it even try reminding/teaching the players about the mechanics the game uses? If the event wasn't demanding, it would just reinforce the belief of some players that learning those mechanics makes no sense, since they can just force their way through content anyways.

From what I see, what the expansion does in this regards is try and take another attempt at teaching players the game. That also IS the case with the strikes, which now go through single player story -> 10-player group event -> future CM encounters. All of it is smoothing out the difficulty curve to ease the entry into late/end-game content and NOT somehow going back on more demanding content.

Edited March 29, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[mythical.6315]

53 minutes ago, Erise.5614 said:

So in other words. It's impossible to disprove because so long as there is any theoretical possibility it's not actually disproven.

While proving it is possible is very trivially possible. Just do it once. 

That's not what I said. 

[hexadecimalwtf.4203]

I would like to see increased difficulty of open world meta but I don't think the current version of Dragons End is the way it should be done. The length of the event is too long that even if it was easy I think people wouldn't want to participate in the whole thing. Getting some of the map buff during the event is an improvement but it would be nice if it was all available during the event and not require a pre-event, or just do away with it in general and tune the difficulty down to compensate. 

 

I think the game has always done a poor job at educating players. Yes this expansion had the dodge and break bar tutorials but there is more to the game than that. One thing I didn't realize at first was how much better 10 stacks of the map buff  was than 9. If you looked at the buff you at 9 stacks you would think it was just 1% per stack. It is easy to understand how players could ignore the need to get all 10 stacks for the extra bonus because if they already had a few. How much would a couple percent really matter. But when at 10 stacks you get an additional 10% it makes a huge difference.

 

Also it's been said dozens of times but the visual clutter in this game makes it very difficult to see anything important. I think it has a negative effect on people learning mechanics because it is hard to tell what is going on. Just allowing us to turn off other players visual effects would go a long way in improving peoples ability to dodge mechanics without actually needing to rebalance the fight.

[Cappy.2786]

I did the meta today after the new changes and results were bad. We were an organised squad and we farmed pre-events for an hour so everyone gets their buff stacks up. Only to be awaited by Soo-Woon relentlessly doing the swoop attack where she goes to the other side of the arena over and over again leaving no window to DPS and us running from one side to the other all the time. Needless to say we failed the event. 2 hours of my life wasted.

 

I really don't want to do this event ever again. It lasts too long, it fails instantly, the rewards are poor, the visual and auditory clarity of the fight is horendous. NPCs yelling, markers covering every inch of the arena, mobs attacking from all sides. I'm not sure how many people will want to do this content in a month, two or three.

 

[Tachenon.5270]

Just experienced my 2nd successful DE meta. Dunno if there was a squad. If so, I wasn't in it! Just your standard PUG thing, so far as I could tell. I was in there doing map completion, along with whatever pre-events I happened to run across -- got in on a successful Jade Maw -- and then the big one started and more and more people joined in and next thing you know, boom. Success! Listened to another lore conversation. Someone in map chat mentioned a saltspray dragon you could talk to -- Albax -- so I did that, too. Cool.

So, yeah. Felt more like GW2. To me, anyway. YMMV.

Edited March 30, 2022 by Tachenon.5270
woops

[Will.9785]

I've completely stopped playing the game outside of daily gathering and whatnot due to this terrible meta.  I'm not going to keep banging my head against the wall.  What's the point?

None of the metas are worth doing.  The rewards are all bad and in the case of DE, the risk of failure is way too high.  The juice ain't worth the squeeze.

There's nothing to do in this expansion after you unlock all the masteries and do map completion.  Fishing is boring.  The strikes are repetitive.  Not even the open world is worth playing with how bad the metas are.

[BadHealer.3608]

8 hours ago, Sobx.1758 said:

In other words: if it wasn't required even at the last meta event of the expansion, then why would it even try reminding/teaching the players about the mechanics the game uses?

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?

[IndigoSundown.5419]

For as long as the game has been live, there have been two basic groups of players, adrenaline hunters and relaxation seekers.   You can use hardcore and casual if you like, but those terms are so loaded I use the other terms, as they describe what the players are seeking in a game.

 

For long stretches, ANet made efforts to provide both groups with content.  "Adrenaline content," (like raids), with the exception of Fractals (which has scaled difficulty), has not drawn enough support to warrant the kind of development the adrenaline players would prefer.  So, ANet decided to try to convert relaxation seekers into adrenaline hunters.  OW metas, starting with Teq, Triple Trouble, revised Shatterer and moving into HoT and beyond, have scaled up quite a bit.  Strikes are another such attempt.

 

So, does it work?  Well, some metas have been successful.   Dragon's Stand and Teq come to mind.   Sooner or later, some players figure out how to beat the thing consistently, and it starts getting beaten regularly.  But, this only happens if the rewards warrant the effort.

 

So, where will Dragon's End come in?  It's all going to come down to rewards.  The mistake ANet made -- if it is one -- is to make the rewards less desirable than other alternatives.  That's what sunk PoF metas, not their "difficulty" alone.

[SexyMofo.8923]

I completely agree. 

[Ruisen.9471]

10 hours ago, blambidy.3216 said:

This game technically was not designed for casuals. Before the game has given expacs. This game was high pvp focused and did actual tournaments where real people earned real cash money.

That was like... 7 years ago.

hardcore players are a tiny minority now.   In HoT they mentioned that the xpack was designed so you can just "log in and play" and not require a huge time commitment.   The game design and audience has changed to be for the large casual audience for a very long time already.
  

43 minutes ago, IndigoSundown.5419 said:

For long stretches, ANet made efforts to provide both groups with content.  "Adrenaline content," (like raids), with the exception of Fractals (which has scaled difficulty), has not drawn enough support to warrant the kind of development the adrenaline players would prefer.  So, ANet decided to try to convert relaxation seekers into adrenaline hunters.  OW metas, starting with Teq, Triple Trouble, revised Shatterer and moving into HoT and beyond, have scaled up quite a bit.  Strikes are another such attempt.

So, does it work? 

Doesn't seem like it.   7 years of Fractals, Triple Trouble and Teq doesn't seem to have visibly increased player competency much, lol.  

Edited March 30, 2022 by Ruisen.9471

[Erise.5614]

9 hours ago, mythical.6315 said:

That's not what I said. 

So, would you like to explain to me. Step by step. How I can do it once and clear your false assumption?

Leaving no possible option left open where you would invalidate the attempt if I follow these steps correctly? 

I would love a way to quickly and easily clear DE. So this would be a huge success if you can provide a decent step by step guide.

And a predictable failure if it does not work out that way. 

[Erise.5614]

9 hours ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Does it "run completely counter to the expansion" though? The expansion went back to re-explain the relevant ingame mechanics to the players. The last meta event available in the expansion aiming at the players utilizing game's mechanics seems to be in line with what the expansion was doing since you've entered the new maps. In other words: if it wasn't required even at the last meta event of the expansion, then why would it even try reminding/teaching the players about the mechanics the game uses? If the event wasn't demanding, it would just reinforce the belief of some players that learning those mechanics makes no sense, since they can just force their way through content anyways.

From what I see, what the expansion does in this regards is try and take another attempt at teaching players the game. That also IS the case with the strikes, which now go through single player story -> 10-player group event -> future CM encounters. All of it is smoothing out the difficulty curve to ease the entry into late/end-game content and NOT somehow going back on more demanding content.

This is incorrect. Nothing that makes DE hard has been re-explained. 

Between the slide show if you dare to up your graphics setting even a bit, the high DPS requirement, the hit boxes that are entirely detached from both hit markers and visuals, the visual clutter of having 50 people stacking on a small spot.

There's been very little teaching here. CC phases are not the problem and using combo fields does nothing useful against the boss. 

The meta does nothing to smooth out the curve. It creates a super weird wall that gives you no feedback about your own performance and just leads to fail after fail. 

Strikes too are overtuned. A better approach than the meta with a few great decisions. But a few too many instadeath mechanics to be a fun entry into group content (note, I'm saying instadeath, not instadown). 

ANet attempts this over and over. But they also fail over and over. Consistently overvaluing hardcore players and undervaluing the experience of entering the end game and the relaxed experience. Always back paddling a few months later because of it. 

[MajinSoul.4512]

I'm not opposed to difficult content, I have done stuff like savage raids in FF14, but I am not looking for that kind of experience when doing events in the overworld and I'm pretty sure the majority of the people doing overworld content doesn't look for that either. Nobody wins with this type of content. The more "hardcore" people will be annoyed by the "lesser skilled" people and the more "casual" people will be frustrated by the difficulty of the event. Add on top of that the lack of meaningful rewards for the time commitment - especially the lack of ANY rewards if you fail - and people will just abandon the event completely. In fact, I have already frequently seen people not even attempting the event anymore myself.

 

The worst part though is the attitude ingame. I have been playing GW2 on and off since release and whenever I return to it I am impressed by the ingame community. This is by far the nicest and most helpful community I have ever seen. Yet it is not uncommon to see a lot of toxicity and insults during a failed DE event which makes me really sad. This shift in the community was not needed and I hope ANET is actively looking to solve that issue.

[Ameepa.6793]

It's annoying when so many collections and achievements require something that is locked behind successful meta so it kinda needs to be repeated multiple times and that is almost impossible. So far I have tried it 10 times and only 1 has been success. That is way too much trouble to ask for completing some simple collection. 

 

Either the meta needs to be tuned down so everyone can complete and even repeat it if necessary, or the fluff things like collections and lore things need to be changed so that they can be completed without the meta. I mean collections like the ones that require you only to talk with someone but who spawns only after successful meta. In my opinion things like that should not be reserved only for the hard core players.

 

 

[The Boz.2038]

"It's unfair that challenge in the game exists, and that something can fail"

^This thread, in short.

I honestly don't get it.
This meta has been nerfed and fixed now week after week, and people still moan about how it's """impossible"""... 
I tried, but I really can't describe it as anything other than entitlement. "This exists, and I must beat it. I haven't beaten it, so it is wrong and needs nerfed, because as it is now, I can't beat it, and I must, for it exists. When I beat it, I will prove that I am good enough to beat it. If I don't, it is at fault, and not me or my ability to beat it." 
It takes literal minutes to just look at your Hero menu, read your stats, maybe even your skills, or dare I hope, traits, and see if stuff gels or not. 
In the end, GW2 allows you to "play how you want", but... where did it say it should give you all of the rewards for none of the effort, too? Had a PUG strike the other day with a bearbow core ranger doing 2k. Whispered him after the strike, said "Just so you know, you can do a lot more with that ranger than what you are doing now". "I prefer it like this" he responded. And that's fine. That's okay. Play as you want. But don't be surprised when you hit a wall, and "playing it like this" doesn't allow you to scale that wall. And don't moan on the forums how the game is elitist and pandering to the raiding crowd because you hit that wall.
 

[Mithrilos.8036]

I'm mainly playing for the lore and the vibes of the world of Gw2, playing a Charr, I'm mostly around Charr areas ( especially Icebrood saga eh...).

 

There is no way to perfectly balance the meta maps, because we have a wide variety of player, who do their things.

And everyone legitimatly want the game to be his way.

 

Yet, I agree with everything said before, especially, Especially the educational part and visual cluttering.

Epic meta big fights are fun alright. but I always prefered things like Silverwastes events and Drizzlewood Coast which reminds me of WvW ambiance.

[Zok.4956]

13 hours ago, blambidy.3216 said:

This game technically was not designed for casuals. Before the game has given expacs. This game was high pvp focused and did actual tournaments where real people earned real cash money. They only cater to casual players because more casual people are more willing to pay more in game. This game tried pvp tournaments.

"This game" is three completely seperate game modes: sPvP and WvW as competitive modes and PvE as a cooperative mode with focus on open world and story. "raids" were never the core focus or "cornerstone" of PvE in GW2.

With the release of HoT, Anet had big ambitions to turn sPvP into eSports and put a lot of money into this. Anet failed big with this and the eSports scene left GW2. sPvP never really recovered from this. This game was and is not ready for eSports.

 

13 hours ago, blambidy.3216 said:

Gave out raid wings 1-3 withing 6 months because Anet wanted players to play this game to a high level. And technically the only reason raids haven’t been up kept because players don’t know how to kill the raid bosses for them to create more wings.

With the release of HoT Anet increased the difficulty in open world and story. I liked HoT a lot, but overall a lot of players left because of this and the revenue went downhill. That's why Anet changed direction in openworld and story with PoF.

With the release of HoT Anet introduced raids as 10-player challenging end-game content because (some) players asked for more challenging group content and Anet did communicate with the community a lot before HoT. Anet did know that only a small fraction of the playerbase will ever do raids in every game that is not primarily focused on raids. At first Anet was happy with the raid participation (it was not much, but higher than in other games). But a year (or two) ago Anet stated, that raid participation is not high enough to justify to put more money/ressources into developing more raids.

I like challenging (group) content. Raids, fractals, strikes are all a part of GW2's PvE. But the raid participation is not low (compared to other areas in PvE) because players are dumb or lazy but because that's how it is in most other games (that are not primarily focused on raids), too .

And repeatedly pushing players into content they do not like is never a good idea. That's maybe only whishful thinking of some devs of the studio who hope to increase participation in a type of content they personally like or thinking about what players *should* do instead of doing what the "openworld"-player community wants. Pride is the 7th deadly sin of MMO design according to Josh Strife Hayes.

 

13 hours ago, blambidy.3216 said:

Omg dragon meta is too hard. Omg why do I need to run a proper build. Omg why Anet why you make me try to play the game with other players.  This right here is the reason why Anet makes easier content.

There's no reason to look down on other players who don't like what you like about GW2. It's immature and shows a lack of empathy.

 

Late EDIT: I have fixed a typo. Originally I wrote "smart fraction" but meant "small fraction". Yes, I know, this is not (always/often) the same. It was not meant as a provocation, or such. Just a typo.

Edited March 30, 2022 by Zok.4956

[Astralporing.1957]

1 hour ago, IndigoSundown.5419 said:

So, does it work?  Well, some metas have been successful.   Dragon's Stand and Teq come to mind.   Sooner or later, some players figure out how to beat the thing consistently, and it starts getting beaten regularly.  But, this only happens if the rewards warrant the effort.

Notice, that Teq didn't become popular because players learned how to beat it. It became popular only after it got nerfed. More than once. Original difficulty Teq was just not being done outside a relatively small grou of players.

Notice also, how the rewards for the unpopular, unnerfed Teq and the popular nerfed one were the same - and were at that point in time considered to be quite good even for the unnerfed version. You just had to be succesful to get them, and most OW randomly gathered groups weren't, so, no matter how good the rewards were, they might have been as well zero for majority of players.

DS has been through some changes as well, although here indeed changes to rewards (adding more chests - and machetes - avaiable at the different stages of meta, instead of hiding all behind succesful completion, as it originally was), and development of "circling strat" for 3 champs were what persuaded players. Although the one factor that should not be underestimated was an overall nerf and reward changes to the AB and TD metas, which brought back general interest in HoT areas. Without that, DS would have been significantly less popular than it is now.

 

Rewards are important, but for them to matter the event needs to be considered doable first. And for that it must be doable - without having to go through LFG hoops and significant effort of map organization.

ED meta fails on both counts (and takes a lot of time as well, which is another issue).

[Mithrilos.8036]

13 minutes ago, Zok.4956 said:

"This game" is three completely seperate game modes: sPvP and WvW as competitive modes and PvE as a cooperative mode with focus on open world and story. "raids" were never the core focus or "cornerstone" of PvE in GW2.

 

This, I'm glad you brough it back, some people sometimes seems to forget about it.

Edit : Raids are here because a portions of the community wanted them badly, and Anet complied. 

Game has plenty of option for all type of player, and now we got a clash because one game mode is lurking toward another ( PVE Meta & Raids )

Edited March 30, 2022 by Mithrilos.8036

[Hesione.9412]

22 hours ago, Zok.4956 said:

Or that person just goes somewhere else after he/she was hurt too much.

 

I appreciate that the developers are trying to convey the basics of game combat, but they don't do a good enough job.

After 10 years Anet made now a small tutorial about combo fields and yet in most open world fights there is so much visual noise and overlapping aoe fields that you can not see them properly.

Anet made now a small tutorial about break bars/cc. But some build/classes have better access to CC than others.

Learning a fight mechanic is one thing. But how to "build tweaks and proper equipment" the game teaches you NOTHING about.

To be able to create and tweak a build is not "average" but "pro". But this is so important because how badly the builds in GW2 are balanced. Good DPS can easily be 10 times higher than average DPS. 

How can a player see if "+10 power" is better or worse then "+5% critical damage" for an open world encounter where they do not know how much boons are flying around? The game teaches players nothing about this. Sure, Anet added the golems. But to use and setup them properly still needs (a lot) knowledge and time. To see how good/bad I am doing in a real fight (as DPS, healer, support etc) I have to use an external tool like "ArcDPS" (I use ArcDPS, but I hate it, that my game crashes after an update if I forget to also update ArcDPS and that Anet took the "easy way out" with this).

A streamer called "mukluk" (spelled correctly, I hope) made a 20k-dps-autoattack-engi-mech build a few days ago. I checked it in DE and other real world bosses and it did quite high DPS with just autoattacking. If everyone would be running the DE meta with this build auto-attacking, there would be no discussion about lacking DPS. I am sure, that build will be nerved. But the point is: Why is the game not helping players to play a decent build, so they can contribue to a fight without "grinding" for the right gear and without complicated rotations? It is often in a fight more about having the right build than having skill. The game teaches and helps players nothing in this matter.

And "grinding for the right gear" is still a thing in GW2. I keep forgetting this myself (because I have 3 sets of legendary armor,  full legendary trinkets and lots of unused ascended weapon boxes and can play around with my builds at no cost) but the best/required stats are not really easy accessible for every player. Even if they go to external websites like metabattle and snowcrows and try to use some of those builds. Sure, players can tweak. But only if they know how. 

And if Anet wanted players to use more and better builds for different encounters, they would give players more free build/gear/template-slots instead of monetizing them heavily.

So, again: Trying to teach players (in a fun way) how the basic game fight mechanics work is a good thing. But I think Anet is (not yet) doing a good job with this. The length of this thread (and all the other similar threads before this one) is prove for that. I hope the game/Anet will improve a lot in this matter before the Steam release. 

 

 

 

Focussing on your point about combo fields, the problem with the training there is that it is trying to get the player to 1. create their combo field and 2. blast it. It is *not* teaching about the different types of fields. It is *not* teaching about how some combo fields are worse than others for certain outcomes. The main area of combo use I see is in WvW, where it is very important to use the right fields, and I try to use them in some PvE situations, e.g. area cleanse. 

 

My finger-in-the-wind guess is that, during the fight, random fields are being put down, sometimes they are blasted, sometimes not. Some players may gain the benefit of repeated combo fields, others won't. If I'm in WvW or a strike mission, and I am on support, I know where I am going to put my field. In WvW, it's often another class blasting it. In a strike mission I will blast my own field. In both those cases, there is a specific reason for, and thus timing to, when those fields are going down and being blasted. These elements are not present in an open-world meta such as the DE fight.

[Mithrilos.8036]

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

[NorthernRedStar.3054]

1 hour ago, Zok.4956 said:

There's no reason to look down on other players who don't like what you like about GW2. It's immature and shows a lack of empathy.

On the contrary, we have the best combat system out of any MMO out there, and these entitled players don't even bother learning its basic nuances. I can totally see why this would bother many others.

Edited March 30, 2022 by NorthernRedStar.3054

[NorthernRedStar.3054]

1 hour ago, Zok.4956 said:

"This game" is three completely seperate game modes:

Technically, four: casual PvE and instanced PvE, PvP and WvW.

[Astralporing.1957]

9 minutes ago, NorthernRedStar.3054 said:

Technically, four: casual PvE and instanced PvE, PvP and WvW.

Yep. And vast majority of players play this game for casual PvE. IIRC from what devs once mentioned SPvP and WvW together is played by less than 10% of players.

[Cait Sith.4650]

I think Dragon's End and The Battle for the Jade Sea have several positive points about them, but also that they are flawed in many of their core aspects. If anyone is interested in reading, I gave my full opinion in the original topic about this discussion. I don't believe most, or any, of the issues I mentioned have yet been addressed.

From what I've been reading in the previous pages of this new topic there's a heated discussion about what type of player GW2 was supposed to cater to originally, as a way to try and justify the choices made for Dragon's End, and what the future of the Open World Meta Events should be. I find that some of the people discussing this always choose to ignore a lot of the game's past, distort it to weave their own narrative, or simply don't know the full history, which is not something most people know. So, regarding that, I'd just simply like to emphasize some of the points in the GW2 Design Manifesto, posted April 27, 2010, by Mike O'Brien, Co-Founder and President of ArenaNet, and Executive Producer of Guild Wars and Guild  Wars 2, from 2000 to 2019. https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2-design-manifesto/

Quote

So if you love MMORPGs, you should check out Guild Wars 2. But if you hate traditional MMORPGs, then you should really check out Guild Wars 2. Because, like Guild Wars before it, GW2 doesn’t fall into the traps of traditional MMORPGs. It doesn’t suck your life away and force you onto a grinding treadmill; it doesn’t make you spend hours preparing to have fun rather than just having fun; and of course, it doesn’t have a monthly fee.

 

Quote

MMOs are social games. So why do they sometimes seem to work so hard to punish you for playing with other players? If I’m out hunting and another player walks by, shouldn’t I welcome his help, rather than worrying that he’s going to steal my kills or consume all the mobs I wanted to kill? Or if I want to play with someone, shouldn’t we naturally have the same goals and objectives, rather than discovering that we’re in the same area but working on a different set of quests?

 

Quote

 

With traditional MMOs you can choose to solo or you can find a good guild or party to play with. With GW2 there’s a third option too: you can just naturally play with all the people around you. I personally spend a big chunk of my time in traditional MMOs soloing, but when I play GW2 I always find myself naturally working with everyone around me to accomplish world objectives, and before long we find ourselves saying, “Hey, there’s a bunch of us here; let’s see if we can take down the swamp boss together,” without ever having bothered to form a party.

Of course GW2 has great support for parties, but they just don’t feel as necessary as they do in other MMOs, because your interests are always aligned with all other nearby players anyway. When someone kills a monster, not just that player’s party but everyone who was seriously involved in the fight gets 100% of the XP and loot for the kill. When an event is happening in the world – when the bandits are terrorizing a village – everyone in the area has the same motivation, and when the event ends, everyone gets rewarded.

 

Feel free to read the entire text, but there was a clear design view, creative choices and type of game and players on the mind of their leadership and staff. So it's not at all unexpected that the vast majority of the long term players in the GW2 community felt alienated with Dragon's End. This is not to say that there's no space for challenge and improvement in Open World PvE, or that Instanced Content in PvE, or the refinement of PvP and WvW, shouldn't be a part of the game's focus going forward. Just that GW2 was founded on a certain type of values, and people have both memories and experience with them, so when a disruptive force appears, the reaction won't normally be positive. Especially when that new content strays heavily from the core tenets of the game, and has not been properly refined.

Anything else I had to say was mentioned on my previous post, and I sincerely hope that ArenaNet can find a middle ground solution, that can please everyone, or as many as possible, which is clearly not the current state of Dragon's End.

Have a good day, and see you in Tyria.

Edited March 30, 2022 by Cait Sith.4650